Belief Manipulation Quotes

Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.

When it comes to controlling human beings, there is no better instrument than lies. Because you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

In the era of President Trump, we've gone from believing things that are 'true enough' to believing things that aren't true at all, and can be demonstrably proven so.

The press has made up so much...God...awful, horrifying stories...it has made me realize the more often you hear a lie, I mean, you begin to believe it.

We choose what and how we believe, and our beliefs are tools that we then use to make things happen ... or not.

Good advertising does not just circulate information. It penetrates the public mind with desires and belief.

I noticed again, too, that he can tell a lie with as straight a face as any man. Probably some of the lies are not lies to him because he believes fanatically the words he is saying.

The goal of modern propaganda is no longer to transform opinion but to arouse an active and mythical belief.

To be believed make the truth unbelievable.

When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts ... Who knows what use they’ll make of you? Maybe you’ll help them to persuade people to buy things they don’t need, or hate things they know nothing about, or hold beliefs that make them easy to handle, or doubt the truths that might save them.

As the capacity to coerce declines, it is natural to turn to control of opinion as the basis for authority and domination - a fundamental principle of government already emphasized by David Hume.

All it takes is one generation to brainwash a population and convince them that reality doesn't exist

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.

Could I make you believe something that wasn't true?' He studied her through his eyelashes. 'You could make me believe anything at all.

If you want something to be true badly enough, you can rewrite it that way, in your head. You can even start to believe it.

There should be a name for this, for the process whereby one knows one is being yanked and concedes it has been done successfully - that one is grateful to have been spun. In the theater, it is called the willing suspension of disbelief. That's what allows the play to make an impact on the audience: they have to be able to make believe that what's happening on the stage is really happening. Maybe to a degree it is a requirement for all political participation, all effective political communication, too.

I think that the massive, overarching, interconnected systems of technology tend to make us a little insecure, somewhat pliable, and susceptible to half-beliefs.

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed.

You can persuade a man to believe almost anything provided he is clever enough, but it is much more difficult to persuade someone less clever.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?. Of all the means I know to lead men, the most effectual is a concealed mystery.The hankering of the mind is irresistible.

A large section of the idling classes of England get their incomes by believing that Jesus was born of a virgin and that Jonah swallowed a whale; and with the progress of science they were naturally finding this more and more difficult. A school of ingenious Bible-twisters arose, to invent symbolical and literary meanings for fairy tales, in order that people who no longer believed could continue with good conscience to collect the salaries of belief.

It only takes a politician believing in what he says for the others to stop believing him.

Politics is not about facts. It is about what politicians can get people to believe.

In a general way, a major goal of the propagandist is to seek some kind of authoritative backing for the belief he or she is propagating.

There are no civilians in 21st-century warfare because the hottest battlefield is the public mind. The front runs between your ears, between your neighbor’s, between mine. The enemy’s objective (and the enemies are numerous) is to capture our thoughts and convictions. Belief is an immensely potent prize.