Gullibility Quotes

“And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

“Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.”
― George Carlin

“Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out.”
― G.K. Chesterton

“Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print.”
― E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

“You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The hocus-pocus phantasm of a God like another Cerberus, with one body and three heads, had its birth and growth in the blood of thousands and thousands of martyrs... In fact, the Athanasian paradox that one is three, and three but one, is so incomprehensible to the human mind, that no candid man can say he has any idea of it, and how can he believe what presents no idea? He who thinks he does, only deceives himself. He proves, also, that man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

[Letter to James Smith discussing Jefferson's hate of the doctrine of the Christian trinity, December 8 1822]”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.”
― Aristotle

“No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have searched the record for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
― H.L. Mencken, The Gist of Mencken: Quotations from America's Critic

“Sarcasm will make your tits fall off.”
― Christopher Moore, Fool

“Teddy said it was a hat, So I put it on. Now dad is saying, "where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?”
― Shel Silverstein

“Let us not be content with merely ‘formatting’ generations, but instead, focus on cultivating and enlightening them, ensuring independent thinking where acceptance is in pace with challenge and trust steers clear of gullibility. ("Skyward, over and above")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“You can't believe everything people tell you - not even if those people are your own brain.”
― Jefferson Smith, Strange Places

“It's because fear sells. It's because war is sport. And it's also very good business.”
― Hugh Howey, Beacon 23

“Well, if she was dumb enough to marry you, she'll believe anything.”
― Oliver Hardy

“We have known for a long time that Prince Charles' empty sails are so rigged as to be swelled by any passing waft or breeze of crankiness and cant. He fell for the fake anthropologist Laurens van der Post. He was bowled over by the charms of homeopathic medicine. He has been believably reported as saying that plants do better if you talk to them in a soothing and encouraging way.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Fame is proof that people are gullible.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The tendency to trust easily anyone gives way to a certain vulnerability.”
― Angelica Hopes, Landscapes of a Heart, Whispers of a Soul

“I suppose that Willie had his natural quota of ordinary suspicion and caginess, but those things tend to evaporate when what people tell you is what you want to hear.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“In the controversy that followed the prince's remarks, his most staunch defender was professor John Taylor, a scholar whose work I had last noticed when he gave good reviews to the psychokinetic (or whatever) capacities of the Israeli conjuror and fraud Uri Geller. The heir to the throne seems to possess the ability to surround himself—perhaps by some mysterious ultramagnetic force?—with every moon-faced spoon-bender, shrub-flatterer, and water-diviner within range.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“W: Nobody's so gullible as scientists. All the phony mediums say so. Can't quite see why.

J: Oh, yes, it would be so. They think they know, you see. That's always dangerous.

~Wharton; Jessop”
― Agatha Christie, Destination Unknown

“Gullibility is a knife at the throat of civilization.”
― David Wong

“You can remember how it was, because you weren't really any different. You could believe the things that people told you, too. Their words were gospel, and you trusted them. You believed because you were sixteen…or seventeen…or eighteen. You believed because your dreams had started running up against the Line like it was a brick wall that didn't have a single crack. And you believed—most of all—because you had to. You needed to believe that someone could get out of this town, same way you needed to believe that that someone just might be you.
And you held onto that belief. You had to. You held on, and it saw you through the Run, saw you crowned the winner. And it saw you down the black road to a cleared patch of dirt in a cornfield, a spot where Jerry Ricks's Smith & Wesson took all your dreams away.”
― Norman Partridge, Dark Harvest

“What attracted men? Good looks? Certainly if a girl was pretty then she tended to get the attention of men; that was beyond any doubt at all. But it was not just prettiness that mattered, because there were many girls who did not look anything special but who seemed to find no difficulty in making men notice them. These girls dressed in a very careful way; they knew which colours appealed to men (red, and other bright colours; men were like cattle in that respect) [...]”
― Alexander McCall Smith, In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

“Sincerity is frequently written off as an immature stance. Naiveté and earnestness often co-exist, but they are not necessarily the same thing. Naiveté is a simple lack of knowledge and experience. Earnestness is a way of BEING in the world: sometimes by default of innocence, but also as a conscious, informed choice to reject cynicism and live life in an authentic way. To be earnest is to face each day with an open spirit, as opposed to living one's life crouched in an impermeable, defensive posture. For many in our culture, it is a much greater sin to be a gullible idealist than a cruel cynic.”
― Kate Kretz, Art from Your Core: A Holistic Guide to Visual Voice

“Gullibility is the art of refusing to exercise the muscle of your mind.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“My lack of questioning does not come from gullibility or naivety, rather, I piece together the reality by discerning intent.”
― Aegelis, Specks of Shadows, Flecks of Light

“Policy is a narrative based on the gullibility of those to whom it will be presented as assumed by the gullibility of those doing the presenting.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“No. Not when I think about it. Not at all," Vern said, thrust into despair at the depth of human gullibility. Perhaps it was a necessity of the species. To be bent toward believing. For in the wild, a child who did not take to the heart the words of its caregivers would easily perish.”
― Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland

“Let us not fall prey to gullibility or paranoia but cultivate mindful watchfulness and protect our inner clarity, asserting our stability in a fractured world. (“Juicy rumours”)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I’ll tell you something else about which I’ve been lately thinking!” he bellowed in a suddenly stentorian voice. “I've been thinking about our beautiful country! Who gave it to us? I’ve been thinking about how God the Almighty gave us this beautiful sprawling land as a reward for how wonderful we are. We’re big, we’re energetic, we’re generous, which is reflected in all our myths, which are so very populated with large high-energy folks who give away all they have! If we have a National Virtue, it is that we are generous, if we have a National Defect, it is that we are too generous! Is it our fault that these little jerks have such a small crappy land? I think not! God Almighty gave them that small crappy land for reasons of His own. It is not my place to start cross-examining God Almighty, asking why He gave them such a small crappy land, my place is to simply enjoy and protect the big bountiful land God Almighty gave us!”

Suddenly Phil didn’t seem like quite so much of a nobody to the other Outer Hornerites. What kind of nobody was so vehement, and used so many confusing phrases with so much certainty, and was so completely accurate about how wonderful and generous and underappreciated they were?”
― George Saunders, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil