How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Once [George] tried to see if he could influence the board by making it spell out his own name. He got the "G," but that was all: the rest was nonsense. It was virtually impossible, he decided, for one person to take control without the remainder of the circle knowing it. (8.71)
Human beings are capable of manipulation together in Childhood's End, but not so much as individuals, as evidenced by George's Ouija board experiment. Instead, it takes a whole bunch of people moving toward a goal to pull off some serious manipulative stunts. Looking at you, Athens colony.
Quote #5
"He pretends to be open-minded and skeptical, but it's clear that he would never have spent so much time and effort in this field unless he had some subconscious faith." (9.12-13)
Boyce pretends that his paranormal studies are the end result of a healthy skepticism, but he's not fooling anyone but himself. Which means he's actually kind of manipulating himself. Egads.
Quote #6
If the [Overlords] had never intervened, we might have reached Mars and Venus by now. I admit that it is equally probable that we would have destroyed ourselves with cobalt bombs and the other global weapons the twentieth century was developing. (12.9)
The Overlords' manipulation might have saved humanity from itself, or it might have destroyed what humanity could have been. The only thing we can say for certain is that those Overlords be manipulative indeed.