Quotes & Sayings About Being Manipulated

The challenge, however, is that Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon do not publish their algorithms. In fact, the methods they use to filter the information you see are deeply proprietary and the "secret sauce" that drives each company's profitability. The problem with this invisible "black box" algorithmic approach to information is that we do not know what has been edited out for us and what we are not seeing. As a result, our digital lives, mediated through a sea of screens, are being actively manipulated and filtered on a daily basis in ways that are both opaque and indecipherable. — Marc Goodman

Love is not a word or an idea or even a place to go to or a thing to strive for. It is not something to grasp and smother and mold and change. It cannot be orchestrated, played, controlled or manipulated. You can not cup it tenderly in your open hand or wish it into being through fervent prayer. — Vanessa G. Foster

Community as belonging ...
Each person with his or her history of being accepted or rejected, with his or her past history of inner pain and difficulties in relationships with parents, is different. But in each one there is a yearning for communion and belonging, but at the same time a fear of it. Love is what we want, yet it is what we fear the most. Love makes us vulnerable and open, but then we can be hurt through rejection and separation. We may crave for love, but then be frightened of losing our liberty and creativity. We want to belong to a group, but we fear a certain death in the group because we may not be seen as unique. We want love, but fear the dependence and commitment it implies; we fear being used, manipulated, smothered and spoiled. We are all so ambivalent toward love, communion and belonging. — Jean Vanier

The wolf is regarded by many North-American scientists like Coppinger (2003) or Peterson (1995) as an "indicator species" for intact wilderness. In Europe however, where no landscape is left that is not manipulated by humans, the wolf is at most able to life as an essentially adapted being within a cultural landscape; evidence for an individual adaptability that totally surprises US-researchers. — Gunther Bloch

We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves. — Leo Buscaglia

True to their history, the English are very domineering and have manipulated it in different ways. I wouldn't say that there was an original, but there is a lot of expurgation in some of the Victorian translations, and there's a lot of additional salacious nonsense in some of them, too. I also like the early French one, much-derided for being fanciful but which is actually very elegantly done. It's very big, very capacious. — Marina Warner

I think there's probably a controlling intelligence in the universe, a being that decided the rules, such as E = mc2, and the value of pi. But that being isn't likely to care whether we sing its praise or not, I doubt whether its decisions can be manipulated by praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary, and I don't believe it will organize special treatment for you on account of what you have around your neck. — Ken Follett

I personally think a lot of us feel ashamed when we try so hard to help someone, only to have that help thrown back in our face or ignored altogether, and we are doing ourselves such a disservice in feeling that way. It's important to speak up, and to talk to those closest to you so they can help you. No one who loves you will stand for you being manipulated or hurt, and you should not be ashamed to talk about it. He — Kristen Proby

I don't like being threatened, lied to, or manipulated. You'd do well to remember that. (Simone)
Or what? You're going to snivel at me? (Xypher) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I was tired of rewriting my opinion of the Society. I was tired of wondering what Rose would wish me to do. I was tired of constantly wondering if I had made the right choice, if I even had a choice, or if I was being manipulated at every turn. — Tarun Shanker

The being level speaks the language of art, music, color shape and pattern directly
a language that requires no words
is not limited by words
nor does it have the specificity of words and thus cannot be broken onto parts that can be manipulated or analyzed by the intellect. It must be swallowed, whole not parsed, sorted and justified. — Thomas Campbell

I don't like being kidnapped. Or manipulated."
"I've done neither, silly. Though I'd like to hear about your other kidnap incidents. The aspects that put you off the experience. — Roberta Pearce

To get elected in Mexico today, you have to compete like any democracy, and you don't do that by being manipulated. — Enrique Pena Nieto

Some readers were aware that the novels they loved amounted to a propaganda campaign, that the love stories had a particular agenda that might or might not have anything at all to do with reality. But then as now, being a canny and independent-minded consumer of popular media did not bar one from also enjoying being manipulated by it. — Hanne Blank

There is one very good reason to learn programming, but it has nothing to do with preparing for high-tech careers or with making sure one is computer literate in order to avoid being cynically manipulated by the computers of the future. The real value of learning to program can only be understood if we look at learning to program as an exercise of the intellect, as a kind of modern-day Latin that we learn to sharpen our minds. — Roger Schank

The very nature of the way a being is programmed to think - is codependent upon the rules - ideas - concepts - and notions - that have been manipulated by members of an elite group. This group is quite intelligent and understands that in order to guarantee its hold on the masses - it must first infuse the members of its society with fear. — Lisa A. Romano

Widen your vision of what beauty is. Realize and keep close the fact that a beauty standard has been created by the very people who sell it, and that it is no accident that the accepted "beauty standard" can easily be described as "perfect." Flaws are not tolerated if you want to be perfect. But the models that we see most often--even the tallest and thinnest and most doe-eyed--are still pinned and sprayed and pulled into place. Then they are manipulated digitally until, literally, everything that might be perceived as a "flaw" is erased. This is a way to sell product. It has nothing to do with real life. It has nothing to do with you. We are made of so-called "flaws." They are the thread that stitches our parts together and keeps us from being generic cut-out paper dolls. You are beautiful. You are enough, now and always. You have always been enough. — Lindsey Gates-Markel

When you see someone draining you, your being naturally cuts it off. Yet many times you can be manipulated not to see. — Frederick Lenz

The book will be a demonstration that children, without being coerced or manipulated, or being put in exotic, specially prepared environments, or having their thinking planned and ordered for them, can, will and do pick up from the world around them important information about what we call the Basics. It will also demonstrate that "ordinary" people, without special schooling themselves, can give their children whatever slight assistance may be needed to help them in their exploration of the world, and that to do this requires no more than a little tact, patience, attention and readily available information. — John Holt

When we do not know our true identity as powerful creators, we are susceptible to being used and manipulated. — Bryant McGill

I can tell if I'm being lied to or manipulated a little better than most. It's definitely an advantage for me. — Troian Bellisario

Nothing was more frightening than being manipulated by my own heart. — Jamie McGuire

If I am loved," Father Damien went on, "it is a merciless and exacting love against which I have no defense. If I am not loved, then I am being pitilessly manipulated by a force I cannot withstand, either, and so it is all the same. I must do what I must do. Go in peace. — Louise Erdrich

Cormac was completely aware that he was being manipulated, but how he could not see. He reckoned that when he did find out, the surprise would be a nasty one. That was how it usually went. — Neal Asher

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies. — Vaclav Havel

One of the things that I was interested in about Moriarty was - he's so manipulative that he doesn't need to commit violence himself or kill people - he can get everyone to do what he needs to do. And sometimes they don't even know that they are being manipulated by him. — Jared Harris

You've come to your senses, that's what. Although stubbornness may be a quality some admire, I find your overabundance of it quite distasteful. You take an enormous amount of leading to reach the correct conclusions."
"You know what I love? I love being manipulated! It makes me so happy and so willing to do whatever I'm being manipulated into!"
His mouth curved into a puzzled frown.
"It's called sarcasm, you stupid faerie nitwit." I picked up the nearest object, a froofy pillow with gold thread in intricate swirling patterns, and chucked it at his head. He stared at me, aghast, and I was pleased to see I'd managed to muss his perfect golden hair. — Kiersten White

I guess what I'm trying to say is, I wouldn't give up a second with you for all the months of being lied to and manipulated by him, as insane as that sounds. That's all. The end. — Kylie Scott

This truth, that I have to please only God, is an important key to becoming resistant to being manipulated by disapproval from others. — Rick Warren

Economists love to talk about incentives, but the bottom line is that people hate being controlled or manipulated, even when done through voluntary institutions. This is one of the most important tensions in capitalism. — Tyler Cowen

The media is not just the message. The media is a massage. We're constantly being stroked, manipulated, adjusted, realigned, and manoeuvered. — Joey Skaggs

Advertising is tax deductible, so we all pay for the privilege of being manipulated and controlled. — Noam Chomsky

The fear of fat works ... because it's being manipulated in us to enforce class divisions, racisms, womyn-hatred. And we give it the room to work because it's so close to us, it's our own bodies, that we don't see it as coming from outside ourselves, we don't name it for the weapon it is. — Elana Dykewomon

What I do know, is that I refused to compromise with the system and I was obsessed with preventing my work from being manipulated for their propaganda. Even stories about the Holocaust could have been promoted as anti-fascist stories, which they were in a way, but I didn't want them to be taken only as such. I remember I had a reading in Berlin in the '80s and a man in the audience, asked me: 'Sir, I read your book, I read the stories, you didn't say who the oppressors were nor who are the people who are suffering.' And I said, 'No, I didn't.' It was important to me that a Vietnamese reader reading a story about a young boy who is in a camp, can recognize himself, without me saying: the boy is a Jew, the oppressor is a Romanian, or a Nazi, and so on. I wanted to have a more universal approach. — Norman Manea

The adivasi people have a long and courageous history of resistance that predates the birth of Maoism. To look upon them as brainless puppets being manipulated by a few middle-class Maoist ideologues is to do them something of a disservice. — Arundhati Roy

The chief offense in bad fiction: we sense that characters are being manipulated, forced to do things they would not really do. — John Gardner

you're worried about Congress being manipulated by money, the United States House of Representatives started filing their campaign contributions electronically a decade ago, yet the United States Senate refuses to do so. Year after year a bill is proposed, and one way or another it ends up suffocating and dying by the end of the session. This results in a half-million dollar expense to the taxpayer as the Federal Election Commission takes nearly three months to type in, from the various campaigns' paper reports, every campaign contribution that every Senate campaign receives. And as a result, we cannot see how a member of the United States Senate is being influenced by money until long after the time when the relevance of that information has passed. — Clay A. Johnson

Conventional opinions fit so comfortably into the dominant paradigm as to be seen not as opinions but as statements of fact, as 'the nature of things.' The very efficacy of opinion manipulation rests on the fact that we do not know we are being manipulated. The most insidious forms of oppression are those that so insinuate themselves into our communication universe and the recesses of our minds that we do not even realize they are acting upon us. — Michael Parenti

And she hates being managed - that is not the word I want. What is it, Maturin?'
'Manipulated.'
'Exactly. She is a dutiful girl - a great sense of duty: I think it rather stupid, but there it is - but still she finds the way her mother has been arranging and pushing and managing and angling in all this perfectly odious. You two must have had hogsheads of that grocer's claret forced down your throats. Perfectly odious: and she is obstinate - strong, if you like - under that bread-and-butter way of hers. It will take a great deal to move her; much more than the excitement of a ball. — Patrick O'Brian

English law in the 15th and 16th centuries, despite being manipulated in favour of the king, did to some extent offer protection against arbitrary arrest and imprisonment. Death sentences could in theory only be imposed after lawful judgment. Slavery had no recognition in English law. Torture remained an extra-legal resort, at odds with legal principle. — Nicholas Vincent

God in America is a free spirit, a supernatural entity capable of being shaped to fit a variety of ideas, Christian or otherwise. Like divine Play-Doh, America's God can be kneaded with hands, squashed between fingers, coerced into shapes, manipulated by devices, and, though it's not always recommended, digested by human bodies. Because God's Spirit is nontoxic. — Matthew Paul Turner

Many people out there don't have a choice in choosing their friends and the people they're being manipulated by. Thank God, I have that choice. I can use my judgment and choose. — Javier Bardem

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

It's not often a thriller keeps me wound up as well as 'Headhunters' did. I knew I was being manipulated and didn't care. It was a pleasure to see how well it was being done. — Roger Ebert

I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation. — Alice Waters

Choose what will motivate you in life as a whole. Will it be Love or Fear that sets you apart in this lifetime? Karma has no hold on our souls greater than a love known as grace. Or a fear of sheer torment during this sojourn of our Earthly trek. If you choose poorly then you shall be preyed upon and easily manipulated by your peers via numerous tactics of hate at large. If again you choose wisely than keep on your guard using reason with an unconditional love. Because a
conditional love is flawed as a mixture of demands placed on it by the frail ego always. It has no place being called love in the absolute eyes of God(dess). — Ivan Alexander Pozo-Illas

For men, it's absolutely essential to stop believing that they're superior to women because that very belief engenders ego, which sets them off-balance. Therefore, they don't realize that they're being manipulated by the second attention of woman because their ego won't permit them. — Frederick Lenz

You are about to see a presentation which will explain to you how almost all of human society is being manipulated by a handful of deviant leaders who use all means to accomplish their monstrous missions. — Anonymous

No human being who is in their centre can be hypnotised. That's what needs to be remembered. No human being who is in their centre, who is being guided, who is close to their intuition, who is a sharp, critical apparatus, who has got a sharp sense of judgement, can ever be manipulated. — Michael Tsarion

The first step away from being manipulated, and towards a more autonomous outlook, is to stand back from a set of responses and think. — Jonathan Glover

For the past several years, I have remained what others would consider underground. I did this in order to build a community of people, like-minded in their desire for freedom and the right to pursue their goals and lives without being manipulated and controlled by a media protected military industrial complex with a completely different agenda. — Lauryn Hill

Propaganda works best when those who are being manipulated
are confident they are acting on their own free will. — Joseph Goebbels

ONE OF THE first things the Nazis did was to distribute 100,000 free radio sets to the Austrian Christians. Where did they get these radios? From us, of course. Right after the Anschluss, the Jews were required to turn in their typewriters and their radios, the idea being that if we could not communicate with each other or the outside world, we would be isolated and more easily terrorized and manipulated. It was a good idea. It worked well. — Edith Hahn Beer

Sandy fidgeted with his pen. "There's something I didn't write down. Maybe I shouldn't tell you, you being a judge and all, but, well, Jake Wexler ... he's a bookie."
No, he should not have told her. "A small-time operator, I'm sure, Mr. McSouthers," the judge replied coldly. "It can have no bearing on the matter before us. Sam Westing manipulated people, cheated workers, bribed officials, stole ideas, but Sam Westing never smoked or drank or placed a bet. Give me a bookie any day over such a fine, upstanding, clean-living man. — Ellen Raskin

Everybody's slow right now, there's nothing happening musically, everybody's all on cable television and being manipulated by all the television right now, what's on cable telling people what to listen to and stuff. — Kool Keith

Everything seemed to have less to do with power, and more to do with right and wrong. And it was also apparent that laws were being manipulated using the inconsistency of free will and the shitty make-up of human nature. ~RUIN Katara Aggelos — Lucian Bane

Writers and people who had command of words were respected and feared as people who manipulated magic. In latter times I think that artists and writers have allowed themselves to be sold down the river. They have accepted the prevailing belief that art and writing are merely forms of entertainment. They're not seen as transformative forces that can change a human being; that can change a society. They are seen as simple entertainment; things with which we can fill 20 minutes, half an hour, while we're waiting to die. — Alan Moore

Society, and the family as its psycho social agent, has to solve a difficult problem: How to break a person's will without his being aware of it? Yet by a complicated process of indoctrination, rewards, punishments, and fitting ideology, it solves this task by and large so well that most people believe they are following their own will and are unaware that their will itself is conditioned and manipulated. — Erich Fromm

There's a phrase that critics of economic forecasting like to use: Give an economist a result you want, and he'll find the numbers to justify it. This entire city is filled with number crunchers who look at the exact same data and interpret it in widely disparate ways on everything from the federal budget deficit to the Social Security surplus." "Meaning that data can be manipulated." "Of course it can, depending on who's paying the meter and whose political agenda is being furthered, — David Baldacci

I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment. — Nick Cave

On Facebook, your past comes into your present when someone from your second grade class suddenly pops up to send you a message, and your future is being manipulated by what Facebook knows to put in front of you next. — Douglas Rushkoff

At some point, when you read about this factual information that comes out in The New Zealand Herald and it's barely mentioned in The New York Times, then I think you've got to question where this is being manipulated, and where the filters are. — Eddie Vedder

Human beings are just machines, Petra knew that, machines that do what you want them to do, if you only know the levers to pull. And no matter how complex people might seem, if you just cut them off from the network of people who give shape to their personality, the communities that form their identity, they'll be reduced to that set of levers. Doesn't matter how hard they resist, or how well they know they're being manipulated. Eventually, if you take the time, you can play the like a piano, every note right where you expect it. — Orson Scott Card

I feel like the American people are being lied to and manipulated. President Bush is trying to force 9/11 and Saddam together. — Janeane Garofalo

We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability ... We do not wish to be crudely manipulated ... We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater. — Anne Lamott

I've always fought against being controlled and manipulated and stomped upon by circumstances. — Jack Nicholson

He [Hern] calls his center the Boulder Abortion Clinic and he said specifically that he didn't want to hide that word. I'm deeply opposed to the politicization of language and try to avoid it when I possibly can - I don't like being manipulated by terms like pro-life or pro-choice. To me, abortionist should be as neutral as podiatrist. But again, maybe it was one battle too many, because it certainly distracted his attention from what I thought was a really sympathetic piece. — John H Richardson

I could talk for ages about how women are amazing, but essentially we shouldn't be manipulated by the media's expectations of our bodies. I'd recommend every woman to read 'Women Who Run with the Wolves' - it's about being in touch with your more wild, free and powerful side. — Bat For Lashes

In a situation of manipulation, the Left is almost always tempted by a "quick return to power," forgets the necessity of joining with the oppressed to forge an organization, and strays into an impossible "dialogue" with the dominant elites. It ends by being manipulated by these elites, and not infrequently itself falls in an elitist game, which it calls "realism."
Manipulation, like the conquest whose objectives it serves, attempts to anesthetize the people so they will not think. For if the people join to their presence in the historical process critical thinking about that process, the threat of their emergence materializes in revolution ... One of the methods of manipulation is to inoculate individuals with the bourgeois appetite for personal success. This manipulation is sometimes carried out directly by the elites and sometimes indirectly, through populist leaders. — Paulo Freire

Crisis. Attempts were made to organize a captive breeding population, but the natural objections of the population in question to being so manipulated - combined with our own innate reflexive obedience - foiled all such programs. We are conditioned to adore and obey our Creators on a personal basis, and while it is easy enough to understand the abstract need to preserve their kind as a whole, the conflict between their specific desires and the needs of the species imposed an impossible burden upon their would-be conservators. We — Charles Stross

Many feel compelled to be connected around the clock because we are afraid we'll miss something important. There is a growing movement to step out and create 'quiet zones' to disconnect from technology and unwind, giving ourselves time to stop and be still. Color choices follow the same minimalistic, 'en plein air' theme, taking a cue from nature rather than being reinvented or mechanically manipulated. Soft, cool hues blend with subtle warm tones to create a soothing escape from the everyday hustle and bustle. — Leatrice Eiseman

At some stage in the process, most mainstream pop records are being manipulated and possibly completely rebuilt on a computer, with a visual program. — James Blake

The notion that critics of the drone program are being manipulated by propaganda from terrorist organizations "would be laughable, were it not so offensive towards civilian victims of drone strikes." A — Jeremy Scahill

I hate being manipulated by song. Don't tell me what I should be feeling. I don't want cellos or violins to be telling me that I should be bawling right now. — Vera Farmiga

I have been manipulated, and I have in turn manipulated others, by recording their response to suffering and misery. So there is guilt in every direction: guilt because I don't practice religion, guilt because I was able to walk away, while this man was dying of starvation or being murdered by another man with a gun. And I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: I didn't kill that man on that photograph, I didn't starve that child. That's why I want to photograph landscapes and flowers. I am sentencing myself to peace. — Don McCullin

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but with 'The Simpsons' and with 'Futurama,' what I'm trying to do in the guise of light entertainment, if this is possible - is nudge people, jostle them a little, wake them up to some of the ways in which we're being manipulated and exploited. — Matt Groening

What attracted me about my mirrors was the idea of having nothing manipulated in them. A piece of bought mirror. Just hung there, without any addition, to operate immediately and directly. Even at the risk of being boring. Mere demonstration. The mirrors, and even more the Panes of Glass, were also certainly directed against Duchamp, against his Large Glass. — Gerhard Richter

American culture is no longer created by the people ... A free, authentic life is no longer possible in AmericaTM today. We are being manipulated in the most insidious way. Our emotions, personalities and core values are under siege from media and cultural forces too complex to decode. A continuous product message has woven itself into the very fabric of our existence. Most North Americans now live designer lives-sleep, eat, sit in car, work, shop, watch TV, sleep again. I doubt there's more than a handful of free, spontaneous minutes anywhere in that cycle. We ourselves have been branded. — Kalle Lasn

She couldn't tell him the truth - that she was here to wrangle a proposal out of him. How desperate would that make her look? Besides, no man wanted to think he was being manipulated into marriage. He wanted to be the pursuer, the one in control. She was simply creating opportunities in which that pursuit might occur. No, — Karen Witemeyer

It's true the manipulator is the loneliest person in the world. And the second loneliest is the person being manipulated. Unless we're honest with each other, we can't connect. We can't be intimate. Only God can penetrate a manipulative person's heart, and even then, he sits quietly, waiting for them to stop running their con. — Donald Miller