Top 133 Manipulative Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

I was asked once if I ever got tired of playing bimbos, and I answered that I've never played a bimbo. I've always played smart, manipulative women. Marilyn Monroe and Judy Holliday, who were not stupid, could play stupid really well, but I don't do it well.

My education was dominated by modernist thinkers and artists who taught me that the supreme imperative was courage to face the awful truth, to scorn the soft-minded optimism of religious and secular romantics as well as the corrupt optimism of governments, advertisers, and mechanistic or manipulative revolutionaries.

There is a fine line I have to walk throughout the writing process in a novel. It is this line between drama and melodrama, and it is this line between evoking genuine emotional power and being manipulative.

Victims may be defensive, submissive, over-accommodating to others, passive-aggressive in conflict, dependent on others for self-worth, overly sensitive, even manipulative. They're often angry, resentful, and envious, feeling unworthy or ashamed about their circumstances. Have you ever felt or acted this way?

Iago is one of the most liked characters in Shakespeare's canon, and he's the most evil, most extraordinarily manipulative person in history. He says the worst, most politically incorrect things, even for the time the play is set in - and yet audiences adore that character.

If we want to prevent another Cambridge Analytica from happening... that starts with regulating big tech beyond just data protection issues, but also looking at whether or not we want as a society to tolerate manipulative design.

You're always feeling powerless in life. If you're in an abusive relationship or working for what we call a psychotic boss sometimes the only option is to leave because you're emotions get so entangled with these manipulative people that staying there you're just helpless because they're good at passive aggressive games and you're not, so you have to leave.

I've been trying to take this journey over the last four years of getting away from playing manipulative and villainous characters and playing characters that are affected by what happens to them as opposed to unaffected.

When we are securely rooted in personal intimacy with the source of life, it will be possible to remain flexible without being relativistic, convinced without being rigid, willing to confront without being offensive, gentle and forgiving without being soft, and true witnesses without being manipulative.

I do think there are some actors that can get away with trying to be funny, and they're still funny because they're just likeable, and you want to see them. Me, though, when you see me trying to be funny, it's like the worst thing in the world. It's needy, it's cloying, it's manipulative - it's bad.

Anne Boleyn isn't a sympathetic character, but I like that she isn't a people pleaser. She's ambitious and manipulative, but she's honest. I'm biased, but I don't think a woman who has said 'no' to the King of England for six years would jump into bed with four of his best friends. She was a slick political mind.

It's a political and manipulative industry. Actors vie for the same roles, movies are snatched away. Have I ever been manipulated? Yes. But I haven't manipulated anyone because if you think from the heart, you cannot be calculative. I have spent nights crying.

My first sales assessment, they tell you your strong points, and they told me I was the emotional salesman, the one who could really connect with people by making them feel comfortable. Once someone told me that, I couldn't get past how manipulative it made me feel.

Her beauty didn’t do her any good and she couldn’t use it in any positive way or manipulative way. I just hope that people will look and see and believe in that hope of love, that hope of freedom, even if it was just for a limited time.

A cat knows how to be comfortable, how to get the people around it to serve it. In a tranquil domestic situation, the cat is a veritable manipulative genius. It seeks the soft, it seeks the warm, it prefers the quiet and it loves to be full. It displays, when it gets its own way in these matters, a degree of contentment we would all like to emulate.

No one ever questions the disorder behind her tarantula LA glamour – sociopathy, narcissism – because it’s good rock and roll, good entertainment! I have a low tolerance for manipulative, egomaniacal behaviour, and usually have to remind myself that the person might be mentally ill.

Poor leaders motivate those following them with false promises of promotions, success, and a great tomorrow but rarely deliver on those promises. Leaders who do this can be manipulative and often hold the goals and aspirations of their followers hostage in order to get them to comply.

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.

Donald Trump doesn't have clear contact with reality, though I'm not sure it qualifies as a bona fide delusion. He needs things to be a certain way even though they aren't, and that's one reason he lies. There can also be a conscious manipulative element to it. When he put forward, and politically thrived on, the falsehood of President Obama's birth in Kenya, outside the United States, he was manipulating that lie as well as undoubtedly believing it in part, at least in a segment of his personality.

Let me get you to understand I don't bully anybody. I stand up for what I believe in and I'm very honest and I always tell the truth. I'm not a liar, I'm not manipulative and I don't stab you in your back because I will stab you in your chest.

As we become more codependent with technology, it's not necessarily based on our desire for the technology but our desire for interconnectivity and wanting to stay connected, which is a natural human instinct. The technology itself is kind of emotionally manipulative.

Facing personal truths and purging yourself of addictions or manipulative habits require strength, courage, humility, faith, and other qualities of a soul with stamina, because you are not just changing yourself; you are changing your universe. Your soul is a compass. Change one coordinate in your spiritual compass and you change your entire life's direction.

Many who are making cellphone images are advocates with a stake in the outcome of what they are depicting. In some ways this makes their work more honest and easier to read - they can also manipulate, although the work of professionals can be quite manipulative as well.

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

Fear isn’t only a guide to keep us safe; it’s also a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life … the great stories go to those who don’t give in to fear.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

People either think I'm this totally savage, idiot-savant genius guy who's lucked out or they think I'm a super-manipulative crafty businessman, this kind of MBA guy who's spotted a gap in the market and knows how to create a product for it. It's flattering, but I've not got that much of a gameplan.

You know the difference between guys and girls? Usually girls say it's no different whatsoever. But you see, a lot of girls they don't understand that they are better than us guys. If you think about it, they are much more manipulative.

There have been a couple specific instances where I've felt like I couldn't survive without interacting with a certain person. I've been involved with some pretty manipulative people who have told me the same thought: that I can't live without them.

So, I went to Germany and ended up parasailing around this castle. I was in Germany sightseeing, eating Bratwurst and hanging out in beer gardens. And then, I got back from Germany and got a call where they were like, "We need to fly you to New York tomorrow to read with Taylor [Schilling]." I was like, "Wait, for Alex, the manipulative drug-smuggling lesbian girl?!," and they were like, "Yeah."

I usually don't think of anyone ever suspecting that I might be someone who'd cry at stuff. I cry at movies all the time. And sometimes it really pisses me off because I hate it when they're just jerking my chain and it's just like completely manipulative.

There's nothing good about being certain about things. And I don't think there's any real talent in using language in a manipulative way, with phrases like "tax relief" or "Social Security reform." It's politically clever, but it's also completely disingenuous, and it's not something to aspire to.

My uncles were all funny. My dad wasn't funny, but my uncles were all funny. Now I go back and I like him better than them, they were manipulative funny.

Men such as President Bill Clinton don't have trouble showing a warmth which works for him, but women in power seem hesitant to use their feminine charm in a man's world out of concern for appearing lightweight, manipulative, or needing to use it to make up for something that is lacking.

As most people when I entered the work world, suddenly people are playing games, being manipulative, being a little bit nasty, you get tricked or you're kind of naive and you do something and people come steal your idea.

I am straight forward; I am not manipulative; I am not two-faced. And I think that that has served me well in all of my roles, particularly as a diplomat, because people knew if I said something, I meant it. If I said no, I meant no, and if I said we could make this work, we would make it work.

Film is the manipulative medium par excellence. When you think back on the history of film and the 20th century, you see the propaganda that's been made. So there are moral demands on the director to treat the spectators as seriously as he or she takes himself and not to see them merely as victims that can be manipulated to whatever ends they have.

For me, what works well about 'Life in a Day' is that it's emotionally affecting without being manipulative. It really does make you think about the connectivity of the world, the similarities and differences. It shows the experiences we all go through: birth, childhood, falling in love, having kids, getting ill, dying.

It was unnerving, the way she could go from cool efficiency to sarcastic to sweet within the space of thirty seconds. I found it very manipulative and controlling. It put the other person constantly on-guard. And it was extremely intimidating because you never knew when she was going to snap. I made a mental note to refine these skills within myself.

I've done a lot of movies that don't have any music in them, and I've always sort of had a kind of wary attitude about music because it can be so manipulative, and also because with pop music, I feel like everybody kind of has their own relationship to songs.

To my embarrassment, I was crying again. Real girl tears for the second time, these ones born out of frustration. That didn't happen to me very often, but I hated it when it did. It was faulty wiring in the female body, tear ducts attached directly to the frustration meter. Trying to explain to men that no, I wasn't being manipulative, I just couldn't stop my eyes from leaking salt water, only added to the aggravation.

Nobody that I know really likes the feeling of having no power and not being able to influence people. But most of us aren't too conscious of what we are trying to do and get that control and that power so people end up sort of playing all kinds of unconscious manipulative games or they're sort of half aware, they have an idea of a strategy or goal they want to use and they think about it. But then in the heat of the moment, it kind of all flies out the window.

'Heroine' is about a declining and imbalanced superstar - a very brave and bold role. I wanted to test whether I could carry a role like this. I have given 200 per cent to this role. She's a very complex character, very aggressive, manipulative and bold, yet she's very fragile.

It isn't those of us who oppose American aggression in the Muslim world who need manipulative, exploitative reminders about 9/11; it's those who cheer for these policies who are making a follow-up attack ever more likely.

My problem is I cannot be manipulative and diplomatic. And to survive on a show like BB,' you have to be very smart. I cannot put so much pressure on my mind. It will be a mental pressure on me.

This is not the story of Elektra from the comics. We're telling the story of 'Daredevil.' In this aspect, the storylines accentuate the sociopathic tendencies in her. The writers wanted to highlight that Elektra is quite manipulative and doesn't seem to have a conscience.

Trying to control the emotional self willfully by manipulative attempts is like trying to choose a number on a thrown die or to push back the water of the Kamo River upstream. Certainly, they end up aggravating their agony and feeling unbearable pain because of their failure in manipulating the emotions.

I believe life is about balance. My mom was brilliant, yet manipulative. Beautiful, but had more voices in her head than the Wu-Tang Clan. Loves her kids, killed her last husband. I say last husband because you don't get another one after that.

At least one reason for trying to live lives that make a difference is that by so living, we hope we will not be forgotten by those who benefit from our trying to make a difference. Yet to try to insure we will not be forgotten too often results in desperate manipulative strategies that are doomed to fail.

It's a controlling thing on stage - you're directing the action, getting people to play their role. In real life, I take being kind and nice seriously, so the last thing I'd ever want to be is that weird, controlling, manipulative character.

Blanket compassion will shift the distribution decisively towards the manipulative end of the spectrum, and may paradoxically decrease the compassion with which the genuinely despairing are treated: for they are apt to get lost in the great mass of pseudo-distress and manipulation, and often their conduct draws less attention precisely because it is less attention-seeking.

All I cared was that she had never lied. She was honest in a world just the opposite, and a cool oasis in my life. She was who she said she was, and everything Sophia, my mother, the pathologically manipulative liar, had never been.

If we want other people to give us something that only God can give, we become a demon. We say, "Love me!" and before you know it we become violent and demanding and manipulative. It's so important that we keep forgiving one another - not once in a while, but every moment of life.

I've been saying it at all our Senate Democratic retreats we need to speak to the heart, not in a manipulative way, not in a way that brings forth everybody's fears and resentments, but truly to speak to the heart so that people know that we're actually on their side.

The American people need no course in philosophy or political science or church history to know that God should not be made into a celestial party chairman. To most of us, the manipulative invoking of religion to advance a politician or a party is frightening and divisive. The American people will tolerate religious leaders taking positions for or against candidates.

When people who are seeking change start out, they are driven by commitment to a cause. But as internecine power struggles take over, one-time idealists fall prey to corruption. They become just as corrupt and manipulative as the system that they want to overthrow.

The Bible writers didn't care that they were bunching together sequences some of which were historical, some preposterous, and some downright manipulative. Faithful recording was not their business; faith was.

Her beauty didn't do her any good and she couldn't use it in any positive way or manipulative way. I just hope that people will look and see and believe in that hope of love, that hope of freedom, even if it was just for a limited time.

You think intercourse is a private act; it's not, it's a social act. Men are sexually predatory in life; and women are sexually manipulative. When two individuals come together and leave their gender outside the bedroom door, then they make love.

The word constructionism is a mnemonic for two aspects of the theory of science education underlying this project. From constructivist theories of psychology we take a view of learning as a reconstruction rather than as a transmission of knowledge. Then we extend the idea of manipulative materials to the idea that learning is most effective when part of an activity the learner experiences as constructing a meaningful product.