Top 100 Manipulative Quotes
#1. Reality TV is sleazy, it is manipulative. It is as momentary as anything in popular culture.
Morley Safer
#2. I mean you really can target your answers to get the instant response and I think that is a very manipulative type of polling. I really have no time for that worm at all.
Jim Bolger
#3. I'm not trying to be coy or manipulative or Machiavellian, I want to spark people's imaginations.
J.J. Abrams
#4. 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.
Anurag Kashyap
#5. A complete woman is probably not a very admirable creature. She is manipulative, uses other people to get her own way, and works within whatever system she is in.
Anita Brookner
#6. I'm never really conscious of saying, "I'm going to take on a specific role to combat a certain image in the public eye." I think that's pretty manipulative and transparent to the public anyway.
Leonardo DiCaprio
#7. '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.
Kareena Kapoor Khan
#8. I believe that you believe that. But this thing, whatever it is, it's tricky. Manipulative. A liar. And it's smarter than you."
"I'll try not to be offended by that."
"You shouldn't be."
"What do you think it is?"
"Something very old and very evil.
C.K. Walker
#9. just a short trip to any French territory in the Pacific is enough to convince even the most casual observer that the French are among the most self-serving, manipulative, trivial-minded, obnoxious, cynical, and corrupting nations on the face of the earth.
Paul Theroux
#10. 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.
Nicholas Sparks
#11. 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.
Richard Hell
#12. I was sure that if he didn't have that damn accent I would have seen through him immediately. Oh, those Brits could be so charming and manipulative with their proper way of talking.
Rachel Higginson
#13. I'm buying things for people I don't even know. I'm like Willy Wonka, but more manipulative. Imagine if Willy Wonka had a devious goal.
Russell Brand
#14. We should all reevaluate advertising that contradicts what we know to be the truth; especially when the ads are harmfully manipulative.
Christy Turlington
#15. 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.
Andrea Dworkin
#16. Controllers, abusers, and manipulative people don't question themselves. They don't ask themselves if the problem is them. They always say the problems is someone else.
Darlene Ouimet
#17. He leaned forward and bit her bottom lip. It was just the right size. He hated women with thin, judgmental lips. Smeared with dark red lipstick. Stingy and manipulative. Bev's mouth looked ripe and vulnerable. He sucked on that soft lower lip for a few seconds.
Penny Watson
#18. [Walter Burns is] the archetypal managing editor-ruthless, self-righteous, manipulative, downright maniacal if it means an exclusive, especially one that it can congratulate itself for on its own front page.
Jay Carr
#19. All writers are manipulative liars.
Jack O. Savage, The Poet
Hunter S. Jones
#20. Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.
Donald Miller
#21. Everyone faces challenges from the fierce competition as well as the manipulative crooks that are rampant throughout the music business.
Wendy Starland
#23. 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
#24. Donny listed 10 Reasons Why She is Nuts
Talking to mushrooms (slime)
Listening to mushrooms (slime)
Seeing mushrooms glow in the dark (ridiculous)
Drinking grass
Eating dirt
Won't talk
Unreasonably rigid and manipulative
Doesn't like sports
Has no TV
Frigid
Sharon Weil
#25. It's intrusive for grandparents to think they're in charge. It's manipulative. Also, it's self-destructive, since if the parents have to resist you, you won't get your mitts on the kid as often.
Anne Lamott
#26. 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.
Constance Wu
#27. The thing with Disney songs is they're very manipulative, very sentimental, but they do get you, you know - there's a kind of sadness to them and that kind of music doesn't really exist any more.
Jarvis Cocker
#28. 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.
Fred Ritchin
#29. Law will take over because law always carries with it a sense of security and manipulative power.
Richard J. Foster
#30. He's sort of a Svengali... It means someone who's manipulative. More than that: somebody who makes you think that you need him in order to accomplish anything.
Anne Beattie
#31. I don't like movies that are too manipulative. A lot of movies thrive on really pushing your buttons and making you hate the villain.
Michel Gondry
#32. As the Greeks have created the Olympus based upon their own image and resemblance, we have created Gotham City and Metropolis and all these galaxies so similar to the corporate world, manipulative, ruthless and well paid, that conceived them.
Braulio Tavares
#33. 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.
Kareena Kapoor Khan
#34. Don't pull that manipulative sex kitten shit on me" ... "but what if I am a manipulative sex kitten shit?
Thea Harrison
#35. You may be a manipulative bastard sometimes, but you are our manipulative bastard.
Laurell K. Hamilton
#36. 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.
NeNe Leakes
#37. 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.
Kevin Spacey
#38. My nephew is a manipulative, scheming, unscrupulous son of a bitch. And those are his good qualities.
Kelley Armstrong
#39. Any time you're trying to do a movie with a happy ending, it's very difficult because it's been done before and you don't want to be manipulative.
Tim Robbins
#40. It did not feel like something that was going to take over my life and destroy it. It felt like a subtle flower instead of a manipulative demon. That's the mystery of heroin.
Corey Feldman
#42. People who say "it's just business" are lying. It's a deceptive and manipulative tactic used by weak minds. Anyone who has ever run or been in business knows that a business will fail if the relationships are not healthy. Business is the business of relationships. That is all.
Richie Norton
#43. But I'm starting to think that most villains aren't evil - they are just misunderstood. Or victims of that most manipulative force: love.
Karina Halle
#44. Giving reasons during conflict to justify or defend a viewpoint is just as manipulative as giving reasons to attack that viewpoint. Neither of these routes is an honest assertive I want that can lead to a workable compromise of interests to quickly resolve the conflict.
Manuel J. Smith
#45. When passages are taken out of context and twisted, the result is a powerful, manipulative, and dangerous weapon indeed.
Lauren Drain
#46. 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.
Louis C.K.
#47. It's not my fault that Nicholas Sparks is an emotionally manipulative bastard who makes me feel things.
Staci Hart
#48. Rachel slid inside her silver Kia and slammed the car door, grateful that the museum's security guard was now watching from a distance. If he hadn't been, she might have acted on a homicidal impulse and run Chase over, the manipulative jerk. In fact, it made her feel better just to imagine it.
Kaylin McFarren
#49. They can also be as manipulative as a James Taylor song. Sure, they're calming and bring you to a good place-but at their core, the whole goal of the damn thing is to undo you.
Brad Meltzer
#50. 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.
Christopher Titus
#51. 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.
Henri Nouwen
#52. Quit it," Kitty warns. "We're not getting a cat. Cats are blah. They're also very manipulative
Jenny Han
#53. Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant, solitary, abrasive, Bohemian, whimsical, brave, sad, manipulative, neurotic, vain, untidy, fastidious, artistic, courteous, rude, a polymath genius. Female characters get to be Strong.
Sophia McDougall
#54. Punk, I see you as a hypocritical, manipulative waste of skin.
Wade Barrett
#55. 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.
Donald Miller
#56. 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.
Tommy Wiseau
#57. 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.
Joe Swanberg
#58. 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.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#59. Everybody has the ability to be manipulative, to be hateful and deceitful.
Neil LaBute
#60. All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. And I hate him for it.
Suzanne Collins
#61. 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.
Katie Nolan
#62. I'm very manipulative towards directors. My theory is that everyone on the set is directing the film, we're all receiving art messages from the universe on how we should do the film.
Jeff Bridges
#63. Most of the books and films I love walk a knife edge between romance and cynicism, and I wanted 'One Day' to stay on that line. I wanted it to be moving, but without being manipulative.
David Nicholls
#64. Ashleigh's a manipulative liar," Jenny said. "She makes Dick Cheney look like Mr. Rogers."
"That is an ugly thing to say about Dick Cheney!" Dr. Goodling snapped. "And my daughter, as well.
J.L. Bryan
#65. Horror I appreciate is one of the few genres that can wind the audience up and make them pay attention. I kind of like that. It's one of the few genres that can be very manipulative.
Bruce Campbell
#66. I can be ruthless, unforgiving, and a manipulative bastard. But I don't play games with sex.
Naima Simone
#67. Tyler was just like any other girl now. She was manipulative and greedy. She was a witch in fucking sexy high heels.
Jaimie Roberts
#68. 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.
Jeanette Winterson
#69. Speech: 1. Tell the truth. Don't lie or turn the truth upside down. 2. Don't exaggerate. 3. Be consistent. This means no double-talk: speaking about something in one way to one person and in an opposite way to another for selfish or manipulative reasons.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#70. Condemning art as manipulative is a non sequitur, of course. All art is manipulative.
Steve Erickson
#71. Our parents were our first gods. If parents are loving, nurturing, and kind, this becomes the child's definition of the creator. If parents were controlling, angry, and manipulative, then this becomes their definition.
David W. Earle
#72. 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.
Rob Thurman
#73. Or like just another manipulative pseudopomo Bullshit artist who's trying to salvage a fiasco by dropping back to a metadimention and commenting on the fiasco itself. (p. 158)
David Foster Wallace
#74. These books ain't window dressing. I think Machiavelli's the most sophisticated writer outside of Shakespeare. Way ahead of his time. Such a manipulative person. Everything he accomplished he did by kissin' ass.
Mike Tyson
#75. Maybe that was why she was helping Madeleine. She was a manipulative bitch, but Dess couldn't imagine living in any other reality than the one those manipulations had created. In a way, Dess owed the old mindcaster something.
Like her life, such as it was.
Scott Westerfeld
#76. If you're sincere, praise is effective. If you're insincere, it's manipulative.
Zig Ziglar
#77. 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.
Morgan Fairchild
#79. With me, personal relationships are like my religion. I care that deeply about them. I am the complete opposite of a manipulative smoothie.
Charles Grodin
#80. I've never played a manipulative, drug-smuggling lesbian before. For me, it's pushing me in an area that's great. There are days when I'd read the script and I'd be like, "Oh, God, I can't believe I have to do that."
Laura Prepon
#81. Generations of women have been told they are delusional, confused, manipulative, malicious, conspiratorial, congenitally dishonest, often all at once. Part
Rebecca Solnit
#82. And I always had this idea for making a movie about a femme fatale, because I like these characters. They're a lot of fun, they're sexy, they're manipulative, they're dangerous.
Brian De Palma
#83. I've seen people who stink, but the film editor shows them just where they didn't stink. But if you're empty and manipulative on stage, it's clear.
D. B. Sweeney
#84. Faking mental illness to get out of a prison sentence, he explained, is exactly the kind of deceitful and manipulative act you'd expect of a psychopath.
Jon Ronson
#85. My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable.
Joyce Meyer
#86. The funeral business is so manipulative emotionally. I would want to be thrown into the sea or burned - something that's not a big hassle.
Bjork
#87. 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.
Glenn Greenwald
#88. I eat haughty, arrogant, manipulative, self-important bitches like you for breakfast, sugar. And then I go back for seconds.
Jennifer Estep
#89. You've always brought out the softer side in my master. But he hasn't changed. He's as changeless as he is ageless. He'll always be selfish, manipulative, untamable. He knows no other way to be, for he is all things Wonderland.
A.G. Howard
#90. To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.
Norman Schwarzkopf
#91. The supremacy of cerebral, manipulative thinking goes together with an atrophy of emotional life.
Erich Fromm
#92. When I began my work on how morality varies across the political spectrum, there was a partisan, manipulative element to it. I wanted to help the Democrats win.
Jonathan Haidt
#93. Despite their common reputation as agents of God's will, forces of good, and the gold standard for morality, all the angels Dean had met over the last year had been shifty, manipulative dicks. Except Cas, of course.
Rebecca Dessertine
#94. I get to the bottom of why I'm so upset. When I do, it's almost too Mortifying to admit. All this months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly.
Suzanne Collins
#95. Women are the sexual slaves of men. They have been convinced that they are the "weaker" sex through a variety of manipulative devices in the Judeo-Christian tradition.
Frederick Lenz
#96. 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.
Diane Kruger
#97. It is not the homeless, mentally ill or extremely cunning people that we have to be afraid of. When someone loses everything that meant something to them is when people should get very afraid. A person that has nothing to lose is the scariest person on earth.
Shannon L. Alder
#98. so often victims end up unnecessarily prolonging their abuse because they buy into the notion that their abuser must be coming from a wounded place and that only patient love and tolerance (and lots of misguided therapy) will help them heal.
George K. Simon
#99. The need for control always comes from someone that has lost it.
Shannon L. Alder
#100. Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?
Eleanor Roosevelt
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