How to Coach Yourself and Others Beware of Manipulation | Page 284

“The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles
paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery
was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their
anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely
read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a
whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets.
Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was
aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small
sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons.”
George Orwell, 1984
“The household was pervaded by this atmosphere of a calm adult woman and a man who gave into
animal impulses. She reported to him in great detail what her analyst ... said about his binges and his
hostility; she used Charley's money to pay Dr. Andrews to catalog his abnormalities. And of course
Charley never heard anything directly from the doctor; he had no way of keeping her from reporting
what served her and holding back what did not. The doctor, too, had no way of getting to the truth of
what she told him; no doubt she only gave him the facts that suited her picture, so that the doctor's
picture of Charley was based on what she wanted him to know. By the time she had ed both going and
coming there was little of it outside her control.”
Philip K. Dick, Confessions of a Crap Artist
“How did you get back?' asked Vautrin.
'I walked,' replied Eugene.
'I wouldn't like half-pleasures, myself,' observed the tempter. 'I'd want to go there in my own carriage,
have my own box, and come back in comfort. All or nothing, that's my motto.'
'And a very good one,' said Madame Vauquer.”
Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
“Madame de Nucingen was already there, dressed with the deliberate aim of appealing to all eyes,
knowing that thereby she would seem even more attractive to Eugène.”
Honoré de Balzac, Père Goriot
“We can be seduced...by powerful political groups that promise more wealth and lower taxes. Those
with power can use clever, psychological tricks and play upon our weaknesses and brokenness in order
to attract us to their way of thinking. We can be manipulated into illusion.”
Jean Vanier, Finding Peace

“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, My Losing Season: A Memoir
“His (Lenin's)humanitarianism was a very abstract passion. It embraced humanity in general but he
seems to have had little love for, or even interest in, humanity in particular. He saw the people with
whom he dealt, his comrades, not as individuals but as receptacles for his ideas. On that basis, and no
other, they were judged. He judged man not by their moral qualities but by their views, or rather the
degree to which they accepted his.”
Paul Johnson, Modern Times

283