Snake Oil Quotes

“Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please!
Come in close where everyone can see!
I got a tale to tell, it isn’t gonna cost a dime!
(And if you believe that,
we’re gonna get along just fine.)”
― Stephen King, Needful Things

“First you make people believe they have a problem, and then you sell them the solution. That's how advertising works. Every snake oil salesman knows that.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

“Beware of those who claims to lead you to better self knowledge by taking your money.”
― Monty Python

“There was money to be made giving all these people what they thought they wanted.”
― George Akerlof, Robert Shiller

“If politicians don't care about the electorate and lie to them, they can't expect the electorate to care back and vote them in. An election must be more than a search for honesty in a snake pit.”
― Stewart Stafford

“General Abdulatty Kofta (Al Araby, 2021). [quoter’s note: a “kofta” is an Egyptian meatball basically] In February 2014, the general announced that the military had invented a device that could cure both Hepatitis C and H.I.V. The proposed cure was a medical device that could detect and destroy the virus, almost instantly. General Abdulatty stated that he would extract the virus from the patient, and give it back to him as a piece of Kofta, which the patient could eat. Even though there was no scientific evidence to support these claims, the pro-regime media pushed the narrative to new heights (El Dashan, 2014), even after the scientific advisor to the interim President Adly Mansour, Essam Hegy, was extremely critical of the announcement due to its lack of scientific merit (Abdelaziz and Abedine, 2014). The military even announced that the miracle cure would be available in military hospitals and clinics starting from July 2014, only to backtrack a month before that date (Loveluck, 2014). It was later established that General Abdulatty was not a medical professional nor a scientist, and that he was previously sentenced to one month in jail in 2007 for impersonating a doctor and practising without a license (Al Araby, 2021). His connection to the military was also questionable. Abdulatty was granted the rank of honorary general after after the head of the engineering authority became attracted to the general’s ideas, in spite of having no formal affiliation with the military establishment (Armbrust, 2019, p. 229). How Abdulatty was able to convince the military brass to support his bizarre claim to have found a miracle cure remain so a mystery, but it is indicative of the level of prevalent polarisation that a charlatan was able to spin such a ridiculous state-sponsored lie that a large number of Egyptians believed.” Chapter “Genesis”, Page 37”
― Maged Mandour, Egypt under El-Sisi: A Nation on the Edge