Manipulative Communication Quotes

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

We often select envenomed praise which, by a reaction upon those we praise, shows faults we could not have shown by other means.

Communication is always "propaganda." The emitter always wants "to get something across."

We often make use of envenomed praise, that reveals on the rebound, as it were, defects in those praised which we dare not exposeany other way.

Propaganda has a bad name, but its root meaning is simply to disseminate through a medium, and all writing therefore is propaganda for something. It's a seeding of the self in the consciousness of others.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defense correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.

There is no flattery so adroit or effectual as that of implicit assent.

There is no need for propaganda to be rich in intellectual content.

It is really - one of the things in it that I heard yesterday in his testimony that I thought was disturbing was this - what did he call it? - a massive persuasion campaign. That sounded a little bit like Goebbels or Gore-bels.

Do not fear the ones who argue, but rather those who are evasive.

Language can be very adept at hiding the truth.

RHETORIC The art of making life less believable; the calculated use of language, not to alarm but to do full harm to our busy minds and properly dispose our listeners to a pain they have never dreamed of. The context of what can be known establishes that love and indifference are forms of language, but the wise addition of punctuation allows us to believe that there are other harms - the dash gives the reader the clear signal they are coming.

Sometimes it has been of great moment while the fight is going on, to disseminate words that pronounce the enemies' captain to be dead, or to have been conquered by another part of the army. Many times this has given victory to him who used it.

A person who says "it's your decision" is informing you that your decision sucks.

My father has a way of persuading people without charm that has always confused me. He states his opinions as if they’re facts, and somehow his complete lack of doubt makes you believe him. That quality frightens me now, because I know what he told me: that I was broken, that I was worthless, that I was nothing. How many of those things did he make me believe?

...in seduction, as in all forms of marketing, form superseds content.

Say yes, babe, or I'll spill you off over the Wall next time - got it?

There are many other ways in which language can be used to manipulate an audience. one obvious way is to simply lie.

Propaganda ... serves more to justify ourselves than to convince others; and the more reason we have to feel guilty, the more fervent our propaganda.

We're so saturated with propaganda every way you look that we don't notice it. But when it isn't there, you notice.

Like propaganda generally, advertising must thus pervade the atmosphere; for it wants, paradoxically, to startle its beholders without really being noticed by them. Its aim is to jolt us, not "into thinking," as in a Brechtian formulation, but specifically away from thought, into quasiautomatic action: "To us," as an executive at Coca-Cola puts it, "communication is message assimilation--the respondent must be shown to behave in some way that proves they [sic] have come to accept the message, not merely to have received it.

I'd rather get bad news from an honest man than lies from a flatterer.

It's barrister behaviour to say what you think will appeal to the person you're talking to, whoever it happens to be, whether it's true or not.