Manipulation Quotes

How can I be expected to love someone who tries such crude manipulations as bringing me breakfast in bed? ~ Matt Groening

God, how patient are Thy poor! These corporations and masters of manipulation in finance heaping up great fortunes by a system of legalized extortion, and then exacting from the contributors-to whom a little means so much-a double share to guard the treasure! ~ Robert M. La Follette, Sr.

A work of art is itself an object, first of all, and so manipulation is unavoidable: it's a prerequisite. But I needed the greater objectivity of the photograph in order to correct my own way of seeing: for instance, if I draw an object from nature, I start to stylize and to change it in accordance with my personal vision and my training. But if I paint from a photograph, I can forget all the criteria that I get from these sources. I can paint against my will, as it were. And that, to me, felt like an enrichment. ~ Gerhard Richter

I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in their times. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The problems of the global economy are not based in perception, but in the reality of prices, balance sheets and income statements, vast concentrations of wealth and power, precarious systemic imbalances, ruthless exploitation, and command economies mismanaged by Central State/Bank policy and manipulation. ~ Charles Hugh Smith

You know, the rulebook states anything agreed through sexual manipulation is thrown out after the act. ~ Kristen Ashley

The problem with today's world is that everyone believes they have the right to express their opinion AND have others listen to it.
The correct statement of individual rights is that everyone has the right to an opinion, but crucially, that opinion can be roundly ignored and even made fun of, particularly if it is demonstrably nonsense! ~ Brian Cox

He is not the leader of great causes, but the broker of little ones. ~ Robert A. Caro

Knowledge [...] no longer consists in a manipulation of man and nature as opposite forces, nor in the reduction of data to mere statistical order, but is a means of liberating mankind from the destructive power of fear, pointing the way toward the goal of the rehabilitation of the human will and the rebirth of faith and confidence in the human person. ~ Ruth Nanda Anshen

To my abusers, the act of setting appropriate boundaries was viewed as hostile aggression. They believed that I was denying them something that belonged to them if I resisted. I was a resource to be exploited for their personal use. I was property who didn't have any rights over my time, my energy, my body, or my possessions. I viewed myself that way too. I believed that they were justified in being angry with me for saying no but I wasn't justified in being angry with them for abusing me. ~ Christina Enevoldsen

Breeze shrugged. Manipulation works so well on a personal level, i don't see why it wouldn't be an equally viable national policy. ~ Brandon Sanderson

Love is not some tool for manipulation. Love is a gift - love is from God. Love means everything. ~ Siri Mitchell

Prayer and action ... can never be seen as contradictory or mutually exclusive. Prayer without action grows into powerless pietism, and action without prayer degenerates into questionable manipulation. ~ Henri Nouwen

I'm constantly lying to my dog. He only responds to manipulation and blackmail. ~ Riley Keough

The one and original lovable monster is lost amid all the hydraulic manipulations in what now emerges as the story of a dumb blonde who falls for a huge plastic finger. ~ Judith Crist

Denotation by means of sounds and markings is a remarkable abstraction. Three letters designate God for me; several lines a million things. How easy becomes the manipulation of the universe here, how evident the concentration of the intellectual world! Language is the dynamics of the spiritual realm. One word of command moves armies; the word liberty entire nations. ~ Novalis

How can you measure progress if you don't know what it costs and who has paid for it? How can the "market" put a price on things - food, clothes, electricity, running water - when it doesn't take into account the REAL cost of production? ~ Arundhati Roy

I want to see her naked, " Mengele said pointing to Marlene. She cried and shock. My mother flung her body in front of Marlene's and said, "You can't have her. I love her, my daughter." My father said, "Take the younger one. She's smarter, " as he pushed me over forward.
Marlene cried because father said I was smarter even though he was just trying to manipulate Mengele. The doctor's chest grew large. ~ Wendy Hoffman

I always feel anxious if anyone's close to uncovering my secrets. ~ Carla H. Krueger

What I don't like is what it sometimes takes to win. Backstabbing. Manipulation. Out-and-out bribery once in a while, and not always the monetary kind. ~ Ellen Hopkins

All art, be it writing, painting, film, dance, whatever, is a manipulation of time and space. It's an interpretation and a recreation of the facts, using various artifacts that point us in the direction of our personal truths. ~ Elisa Lorello

Family doesn't mean they are like the Waltons. No contact is for you and it makes you stronger then you know. The hardest thing for an empath is walking away from family, we always hoped for the best. ~ Tracy Malone

Fear sticks like a barb in the mind. Someone cold enough to take advantage of it can attach strings to those barbs and make puppets of men and women. ~ Lance Conrad

Earth is a divine organism
it cannot be successfully manipulated
Who attempts manipulation will encounter defeat ~ Lao-Tzu

The world has been changing even faster as people, devices and information are increasingly connected to each other. Computational power is growing and quantum computing is quickly being realised. This will revolutionise artificial intelligence with exponentially faster speeds. It will advance encryption. Quantum computers will change everything, even human biology. There is already one technique to edit DNA precisely, called CRISPR. The basis of this genome-editing technology is a bacterial defence system. It can accurately target and edit stretches of genetic code. The best intention of genetic manipulation is that modifying genes would allow scientists to treat genetic causes of disease by correcting gene mutations. There are, however, less noble possibilities for manipulating DNA. How far we can go with genetic engineering will become an increasingly urgent question. We can't see the possibilities of curing motor neurone diseases - like my ALS - without also glimpsing its dangers.
Intelligence is characterised as the ability to adapt to change. Human intelligence is the result of generations of natural selection of those with the ability to adapt to changed circumstances. We must not fear change. We need to make it work to our advantage.
We all have a role to play in making sure that we, and the next generation, have not just the opportunity but the determination to engage fully with the study of science at an early level, so that we can go on to fulfil our pote ~ Stephen Hawking

Let's go to the festival," he said. He was too thin, I thought. There were shadows under his cheekbones where flesh should have been, in a face so young. "No Ryzek. Just you and me."
I stared down at his upturned palm. He offered touch to me so freely, without realizing how rare it was. How rare he was, to a person like me.
"Why?" I said.
"What?"
"You've been nice to me recently." I furrowed my brow. "You're being nice to me now. Why? What's in it for you?"
"Growing up here really has warped you, hasn't it?"
"Growing up here," I clarified, "has made me see the truth about people."
He sighed, like he disagreed with me but didn't want to bother to argue. He sighed that way a lot. "We spend a lot of time together, Cyra. Being nice is a matter of survival."
"I'll be recognized. The currentshadows are memorable, even if my face is not."
"You won't have any currentshadows. You'll be with me." He cocked his head to the side. "Or are you really that uncomfortable with touching me?"
It was a challenge. And maybe a manipulation. ~ Veronica Roth

In proportion that property is small, the danger of misusing the franchisee is great. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Today the function of psychiatry, psychology and psychoanalysis threatens to become the tool in the manipulation of man. ~ Erich Fromm

This is an age of mass production. In the mass production of materials a broad technique has been developed and applied to their distribution. In this age, too, there must be a technique for the mass distribution of ideas. ~ Edward Bernays

What man ever openly apologizes for slander? It is not so much a feeling of slander as it is that of a massive lie, a misdeed not only to the slandered but also to those manipulated in the process. He has made them all, every one, his enemies, thereupon he is so overwhelmed with guilt that he will deny it until his grave. ~ Criss Jami

He's unbelievably smart. He continually shows me what he can take from me if he wants to, and then turns the tables on me, making me realize how much I want him to have it anyway. How much I want to give it to him. I hate that. On principle I want to not succumb to the manipulation this time. To show the bastard he's not as smart as he thinks he is. Only he is. He's an evil fucking mastermind. ~ Callie Hart

Everything happens because there was a lesson you needed to learn. Move on from the messenger they were not the lesson. Find the lesson and you will never repeat it again. ~ Tracy A Malone

If there are four equations and only three variables, and no one of the equations is derivable from the others by algebraic manipulation then there is another variable missing. ~ Talcott Parsons

What insanity would lead me to believe that I possess the power, much less the aptitude to manipulate all of the consequences out of all of my decisions? ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Persuasion with good intention helps problem-solving; manipulation often serves the ego. ~ Pearl Zhu

Astronomers ... have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art. ~ Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Traits that are common among psychopathic serial killers
a grandiose sense of self-worth, persuasiveness, superficial charm, ruthlessness, lack of remorse, and the manipulation of others
are also shared by politicians and world leaders. ~ Kevin Dutton

She is playing a game that she doesn't want to play, but can't seem to quit. As a player she wishes to see how the game concludes, but she also wishes the other player would retreat. She wants to win after-all and she makes for a sore loser, but her combatant uses his moves to keep her off-guard and primed for his advance. Should she block him, outmaneuver him, or just play dead until his back is turned? Isn't the last the way of the female? ~ Donna Lynn Hope

If kindness and compassion opens the door to manipulation, it is time to take your business elsewhere. ~ Charles F. Glassman

Speaking of a future at most only decades away, an experimenter in intelligence control asserted, I foresee a time when we shall have the means and therefore, inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behavior and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

Many profit-driven corporate strategies are based on fashion, planned obsolescence, unneeded upgrades, and masterful emotional manipulation --marketing--causing people to continuously replace goods which are still in good working order. ~ Jacob Lund Fisker

Don't let fear of your unknown future paralyze you. You get to write the next chapter so get out your crayon. Dream it plan how you will get there and build it. ~ Tracy A Malone

It was easier to manipulate someone if they didn't perceive you as a threat. ~ Stephanie Wrobel

It was a familiar pattern. They would whisperingly condemn his violence with those sour, baleful expressions, until they wanted some cunt sorting out, then he would suddenly become the big hero. Manipulation. He'd discussed all this with Melanie, with his mentor, John Dick, the prison officer. It had suited them all to keep him as he was. It still suits them. He will leave them back here in Edinburgh. They can either shut the door in his face or seize him in a hypocritical embrace, it won't matter; he will be walking away from them all. ~ Irvine Welsh

Love can be used to drain people. Through eye contact people send a cord out to drain you long distance. Through sexual manipulation, anyone who can make you like them can drain you. ~ Frederick Lenz

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

Well the other thing about lying is that the liar is banking on two things when telling the lie. They are hoping that the person being lied to is gullible enough to believe, and it's also not even that they think they are gullible, it's that they know the person they are lying to well enough that they know the person won't push it any further because they know the person they are lying to wants to believe the lie. ~ Garry Crystal

A few times in my life, I have been manipulated by the sexual power of a woman. "Could you help with my assignment?" I'll do it for you. "I don't know why they've given me middle seat." Take mine. "I thought the trains would still be running." Let me drive your home. No promises, no offers, nothing expected in return. ~ Graeme Simsion

In a situation where flesh is consumed, vegetarians inevitably call attention to themselves. They have made something absent on their plates; perhaps a verbal demurral has been required as well. They then are drawn into a discussion regarding their vegetarianism. Frequently, there will be someone present who actually feels hostile to vegetarianism and regards it as a personal challenge. If this is the case, all sorts of outrageous issues are thrown out to see how the vegetarian will handle them. The vegetarian, enthusiastic reformer, sees the opportunity as one of education; but it is not. instead it is a teasing game of manipulation. At times, ludicrous questions are raised; they imply that the entire discussion is ludicrous. ~ Carol J. Adams

A lady is never disreputable in public, unless intended for manipulation of sympathies. ~ Gail Carriger

Once you go digging into the actual technical mechanisms by which predictability is calculated, you come to understand that its science is, in fact, anti-scientific, and fatally misnamed: predictability is actually manipulation. A website that tells you that because you liked this book you might also like books by James Clapper or Michael Hayden isn't offering an educated guess as much as a mechanism of subtle coercion. ~ Edward Snowden

He's the master of manipulation, the king of allure. ~ Portia Moore

The trick to this solution is that you'd have to be 100% honest. Meaning not just sincere but almost naked. Worse than naked - more like unarmed. Defenseless. 'This thing I feel, I can't name it straight out but it seems important, do you feel it too?' - this sort of direct question is not for the squeamish. For one thing, it's perilously close to "Do you like me? Please like me," which you know quite well that 99% of all interhuman manipulation and bullshit gamesmanship that goes on goes on precisely because the idea of saying this sort of thing straight out is regarded as somehow obsene. In fact one of the very last few interperonal taboos we have is kind of obscenely naked direct interrogation of somebody else. It looks pathetic and desperate. That's how it'll look to the reader. And it will have to. There's no way around it. ~ David Foster Wallace

It is a surprising fact that those who object most violently to the manipulation of behaviour nevertheless make the most vigorous effort to manipulate minds. ~ B.F. Skinner

Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly. ~ Charles Fort

even admirable human desires for love, for belonging, and for meaning can be manipulated by unscrupulous individuals to benefit themselves ~ Noah Berlatsky

This is supposed to be a participatory democracy and if we're not in there participating then the people that will manipulate and exploit the system will step in there. ~ George Takei

Pet ownership is an absolutely abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation. ~ Ingrid Newkirk

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

The palliative of the primitive hut. The place where you are stripped back to essentials, to which you return - even if it happens not to be where you came from - to decontaminate and absolve yourself of the striving. The place where you disrobe, molt it all, the uniforms you've worn and the costumes you've gotten into, where you shed your batteredness and your resentment, your appeasement of the world and your defiance of the world, your manipulation of the world and its manhandling of you. The aging man leaves and goes into the woods - Eastern philosophical thought abounds with that motif, Taoist thought, Hindu thought, Chinese thought. The "forest dweller," the last stage on life's way. Think of those Chinese paintings of the old man under the mountain, the old Chinese man all alone under the mountain, receding from the agitation of the autobiographical. He has entered vigorously into competition with life; now, becalmed, he enters into competition with death, drawn down into austerity, the final business. ~ Philip Roth

The criminalization of debt, then, was the criminalization of the very basis of human society. It cannot be overemphasized that in a small community, everyone normally was both a lender and borrower. One can only imagine the tensions and temptations that must have existed in a community - and communities, much though they are based on love, in fact because they are based on love, will always also be full of hatred, rivalry and passion - when it became clear that with sufficiently clever scheming, manipulation, and perhaps a bit of strategic bribery, they could arrange to have almost anyone they hated imprisoned or even hanged. ~ David Graeber

Traders today complain of living in fear that chats from a bygone era will be dredged up and used against them. They paint a picture of a world where communications are monitored, compliance officers roam the trading floors and it's hard to make an honest living. Banks have finally got the picture, they claim. Market manipulation on the scale we've seen over the past few years is no longer possible. Time will tell (p. 174). ~ Gavin Finch

Lying is manipulation. I prefer to call what I did 'improvisation in times of desperation. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you, rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there. This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in. ~ Michael Singer

Whining is a form of manipulation. People will give anything to make you shut up. ~ Jessica Zafra

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist. ~ Barbara Marciniak

The most dangerous person is one who insists that he is right and who is believed to never be wrong. In principle, psychological manipulation of public opinion in such conditions is not difficult. ~ Elmar Hussein

Young girls are like helpless children in the hands of amorous men, whatever is said to them is true and whatever manipulation on their bodies seems like love to them, sooner or later, they come back to their senses, but the scars are not dead inasmuch as her spoiler lives. ~ Michael Bassey

Everything about a movie is manipulation. ~ Frederick Wiseman

I would never have supposed that inexperienced girl was capable of such cold-blooded, calculating manipulation! ~ Elizabeth Peters

1. The face tears up from laughter, and there is not flesh and soul, but a continuous smile of awareness.
2. A ghost is a hologram record of the projection of the universe, once generated by an accident of chaos, living in reality. This spirit is like the same memoirs and nostalgia of the past. This is a retro record of bygone times, traveling in empty eternity and nonsense, feeling only insensibility. A time-space film of time and space existing in time, in the depressing eternity of reality, in the void of consciousness of loneliness. A ghost who sees is not evolutionary progress, but the life cycle of a temporary transformation, rotting from the depravity of people.
3. Loneliness is a catcher of erotic dreams.
4. Careerism is a children's entertainment, attraction mini-golf of self-motivation and discipline.
5. Death from the dust of all the dead and dust of memories. Fear is all out of the darkness of the subconscious of billions of threads of manipulation.
6. Love relationships as a table hockey attraction, and the puck is the fault.
7. Laziness as an attraction a children's rocking chair is an illusion of movement.
8. The idea appeared in a mirror maze and it is reflected in all the mirrors, that is, the opinion that the source cannot be found because it is hidden from your eyes. You see that opinion is a sect. ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

If manipulation really does increase welfare, then it would seem to be justified and even mandatory on ethical grounds. ~ Cass R. Sunstein

Art is the manipulation of someone else's imagination. ~ Sol Saks

We cannot have a society, in which, if two people wish to communicate the only way that can happen is if it's financed by a third person who wishes to manipulate them. ~ Jaron Lanier

I considered how the princes were masters of manipulation and wondered if Ahkeel knew exactly how this would end and if I'd survive his game. ~ Pippa DaCosta

The apparatus of corrective penality acts in a quite different way. The point of application of the penality is not the representation, but the body, time, everyday gestures and activities; the soul, too, but in so far as it is the seat of habits. The body and the soul, as principles of behaviour, from the element that is now proposed for punitive intervention. Rather than on an art of representations, this punitive intervention must rest on studied manipulation of the individual:'I have no more doubt of every crime having its cure in moral and physical influence...'; so, in order to decide on punishments, one 'will require some knowledge of the principles of sensations, and of the sympathies which occur in the nervous system'. As for the instruments used, these are no longer complexes of representation, reinforced and circulated, but forms of coercion, schemata of constraint, applied and repeated. Exercises, not signs: time-tables, compulsory movements, regular activities, solitary meditation, work in common, silence, application, respect, good habits. And, ultimately, what one is trying to restore in this technique of correction is not so much the juridical subject, who is caught up in the fundamental interests of the social pact, but the obedient subject, the individual subjected to habits, rules, orders, an authority that is exercised continually around him and upon him, and which he must allow to function automatically in him. There are two quite distinct ways, therefore ~ Michel Foucalut

The idea of someone who can play with their emotions, who can 'mystically' get them to do certain things, makes them uncomfortable. What they do not realize-and what you must realize-is that manipulating others is something that all people do. In fact, manipulation is at the core of our social interaction." He settled back, raising his dueling cane and gesturing with it slightly as he spoke. "Think about it. What is a man doing when he seeks the affection of a young lady? Why, he is trying to manipulate her to regard him favorably. What happens when two old friends sit down for a drink? They tell stories, trying to impress each other. Life as a human being is about posturing and influence. This isn't a bad thing-in fact, we depend upon it. These interactions teach us how to respond to others." -Breeze ~ Brandon Sanderson

She was feeling more vulnerable and alone than she had felt in years. And incredibly frightened. For all her fiercely held independence, she still desperately craved solace. A secret desire to be held, protected. Loved? No, that was going to far. Love was a manipulation. A lie. Lust was more honest. Lust only messed with your body not your mind. ~ Elise Title

These tactics are initiated if the abuser wants to explore the possibility of a lasting relationship and if he feels that the particular woman would be susceptible to such tactics. ~ Don Hennessy

She was black, too, or rather, a delicious shade of café au lait, and this, we were constantly told, represented progression an industry concerned merely with surfaces. (I am dubious: could it not be that, this season, café au lait was the 'in' shade? Have we seen a sudden influx of black women into the industry in Landry's wake? Have our notions of female beauty been revolutionised by her success? Are black Barbies now out-selling white?) ~ Robert Galbraith

Storytellers are master manipulators transforming non-reality (grounded in reality) into vicarious experience. ~ BatWhaleDragon

Economic growth springs not chiefly from incentives - carrots and sticks, rewards and punishments for workers and entrepreneurs. The incentive theory of capitalism allows its critics to depict it as an inhumane scheme of clever manipulation of human needs and hungers scarcely superior to the more benign forms of slavery. Wealth actually springs from the expansion of information and learning, profits and creativity that enhance the human qualities of its beneficiaries as it enriches them. Workers' learning increasingly compensates for their labor, which imparts knowledge as it extracts work. Joining knowledge and power, capitalism focuses on the entropy of human minds and the benefits of freedom. Thus it is the most humane of all economic systems. ~ George Gilder

Manipulation is the art of making another person's spirit dance for personal amusement, and only through honoring oneself do we become strong enough to refuse to dance. ~ Caroline Myss

Mind control is the process by which individual or collective freedom of choice and action is compromised by agents or agencies that modify or distort perception, motivation, affect, cognition and/or behavioral outcomes. It is neither magical nor mystical, but a process that involves a set of basic social psychological principles. Conformity, compliance, persuasion, dissonance, reactance, guilt and fear arousal, modeling and identification are some of the staple social influence ingredients well studied in psychological experiments and field studies. In some combinations, they create a powerful crucible of extreme mental and behavioral manipulation when synthesized with several other real-world factors, such as charismatic, authoritarian leaders, dominant ideologies, social isolation, physical debilitation, induced phobias, and extreme threats or promised rewards that are typically deceptively orchestrated, over an extended time period in settings where they are applied intensively. ~ Steven Hassan

I always try to just be honest ... As opposed to artifice or manipulation. ~ Demetri Martin

All things are possible; if something seems like it's not, it's only because enough people aren't being deceived into the possibilities yet. ~ A.J. Darkholme

True love is built on free will and free choice, not control and manipulation. ~ Ken Poirot

The world cannot be governed without juggling. ~ John Selden

So sometimes it is an outright manipulation like that, but most of the time I'm just, I'm creating a mood that is a place of comfort for the person and a way for our dialogue to be more fluid. ~ Carol Friedman

Legal ethics is a misnomer ... lawyers conducting themselves legally are not necessarily conducting themselves morally ." ... and ... "The zero sum nature of the legal system, combined with the universal adoption of zealotry as the marching orders of practioners and prosecutors, transforms the moral mission of the legal system from one of truth-seeking, storytelling, and justice, to one of fabrication, distortion, and manipulation in pursuit of victory. These victories, however, make us all losers. ~ Thane Rosenbaum

What's next is the manipulation of spiritual values and tendencies. It is no accident that in the last few years we have seen a new religious thought. The religion of acquiescence and passivity: trusting in the process; whatever happens is what needs to happen; everyone is right where they need to be; you don't resist; you acquiesce; to resist is to be negative, is to be fearful, is to be unconscious. A great prescription for convincing the natives to give over the keys to the kingdom, a very good, clever form of manipulation. ~ M.V. Summers

Differences of power are always manifested in asymmetrical access. ~ Marilyn Frye

Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation. ~ Terence McKenna

I guess the higher up on the food chain you go, the admiration isn't just for the hungry, but for the ones that go the extra mile to take a bite. ~ Angela Richardson

When one becomes accustomed to "companionship" without demands, life with people may seem overwhelming. Dependence on a person is risky but it also opens us to deeply knowing another. ~ Sherry Turkle

Raphael pulled out a paperback and handed it to me. The cover, done back in the time when computer-aided imagine manipulation had risen to the level of art, featured an impossibly handsome man, leaning forward, one foot in a huge black boot resting on the carcass of some monstrous sea creature. His hair flowed down to his shoulders in a mane of white gold, in stark contrast to his tanned skin and the rakish black patch hiding his left eye. His white, translucent shirt hung open, revealing abs of steel and a massive, perfectly carved chest graced by erect nipples. His muscled thighs strained the fabric of his pants, which were unbuttoned and sat loosely on his narrow hips, a touch of a strategically positioned shadow hinting at the world's biggest boner.
The cover proclaimed in loud golden letters: The Privateer's Virgin Mistress, by Lorna Sterling.
"Novel number four for Andrea's collection?" I guessed.
Raphael nodded and took the book from my hands. "I've got the other one Andrea wanted, too. Can you explain something to me?"
Oh boy. "I can try."
He tapped the book on his leather-covered knee. "The pirate actually holds this chick's brother for ransom, so she'll sleep with him. These men, they aren't real men. They're pseudo-bad guys just waiting for the love of a 'good' woman."
"You actually read the books?"
He gave me a chiding glance. "Of course I read the books. It's all pirates and the women they steal, apparently so they can enjoy lo ~ Ilona Andrews

Science of yoga and ayurveda is subtler than the science of medicine, because science of medicine is often victim of statistical manipulation. ~ Amit Ray

When you manipulate others your attention level drops and you become prey, for you have dropped to the plane of manipulation. ~ Frederick Lenz

Manipulations of opinion, insofar as they are inspired by well-defined interests, have limited goals; their effect, however, if they happen to touch upon an issue of authentic concern, is no longer subject to their control and may easily produce consequences they never foresaw or intended. ~ Hannah Arendt

The pen had been mightier than the sword but then the tongue took over. ~ Amit Abraham