#manipulation

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that. ↗

— John Perkins

#been #built #cheating #economic #empire

In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us. ↗

— George Saunders

#manipulation #story #integrity

Jesus, you'd think the Black Death was sweeping the globe every three months or so...ebola, SARS, avian flu. You know how many people made money on those scares? Shit, I made my first million on useless antiradiation pills during dirty bomb scares. ↗

— Max Brooks

#manipulation #pharmaceutical-industry #scares #death

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. ↗

— Edward Bernays

#democratic #democratic society #element #habits #important

It's so easy to manipulate an audience, but it's nearly always clear that you are being manipulated. I think even people that are not critically attuned are aware of cynical manipulation in film. ↗

— John Boorman

#attuned #audience #aware #being #clear

China's idea of fair trade is government subsidies of its textile and apparel exports to the United States, currency manipulation, and forgiveness of loans by its government banks. ↗

— Virginia Foxx

#banks #china #currency #exports #fair

The words “I love you” could contain all the bloodthirsty despair of the abattoir, all the hopelessness of the most isolated, frozen gulag, all the lurid sadness of death row. ↗

— Pat Conroy

#manipulation #death

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind. ↗

— Edward L. Bernays

#manipulation #mind-control #psychology #business

We all agree that parents have the primary responsibility of filtering the material that reaches children. However, children are often lured onto websites containing obscene material through the devious manipulation of search engines. ↗

— Robert A. Brady

#children #containing #devious #engines #filtering

The research rat of the future allows experimentation without manipulation of the real world. This is the cutting edge of modeling technology. ↗

— John Spencer

#allows #cutting #cutting edge #edge #experimentation