Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.
I don't believe in the moon landing conspiracy theory. I don't believe in Big Foot.
Government agents (and their allies) might enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic or implications for political action.
Putin and his advisers don't understand the power of public opinion in the West. They believe in conspiracy theories and that someone is orchestrating a malicious campaign against Russia. They don't realize that even conservative politicians have to react when newspapers and artists express their concern on such an issue.
I think one of the reasons that we like conspiracy theories is I think that we like to feel like there is a group of people who are so smart and powerful that they can pull the wool over an entire country or in fact even an entire world's eyes. That certainly makes us feel like somehow we're protected, even if it's not in our best interest.
I'm disturbed when people let superstition, magical thinking, extreme conspiracy theories and so on blur their minds.
I always say Manny [Ramirez] is a strange guy. Outwardly, he's happy-go-lucky. On the inside, he's got a lot of conspiracy theories going on. I would say Manny might be one of these guys when he's 50 years old, he might be in his house with all the blinds shut kind of looking out like the CIA's out there. You don't know, man. I mean, you don't know what's going on in the interior with him. So you don't worry about it.
The only other scenario that could explain everything, up to and including your own bizarre apperance, is a convoluted conspiracy theory involving the Russian Mafia and a crack team of plastic surgeons.
I would not call myself a veteran conspiracy theorist. Or an obsessed one. I pretty much peaked on the whole conspiracy theory thing in the '60s, with the grassy knoll, who really killed JFK, and who ordered the hit on Lee Harvey Oswald.
Conspiracy theories abound in American politics. I don't think we need to be subliminable about the differences between our views on prescription drugs.
Coming from Donald Trump, who pushed the racist birth conspiracy theory for years against Barack Obama, I think Barack Obama has been very much a gentleman. And he has a lot of reason to just not even bother to deal with Trump.
Hillary Clinton never had this kind of success with her invention of the vast right-wing conspiracy. She tried, but that bombed out compared to this. Back then, it was her husband that ended up being impeached despite her conspiracy theory. But, sadly, now the chants of "lock her up" are just a distant, bitter memory, and the Donald Trump administration is in the crosshairs.
A lot of things, whether it's Brexit, the U.S. election, things that are happening on Facebook Live, the way that Twitter in many cases was weaponized, obviously for good but then obviously for bad, for proxy. Governments who use it to troll and give voice to conspiracy theories, white supremacists, et cetera. I think that's not going away.
The play of Hillary Clinton is to do exactly what she did with Whitewater, with the conspiracy theories about Vince Foster's suicide, with the conspiracy theory that Clinton Foundation donations somehow went to the Russians to open a Nickel mine in Canada, this is all nonsense. This stuff has been going on for 30 years.
You choose your own reality and you - social media then amplifies those conspiracy theories. So that's why I say social media is itself a revolutionary phenomenon.
I think conspiracy theories have gotten more and more close to the mainstream because what you've got is a fragmentation of the media, where the media becomes much more polarized today, left and right.
We have Internet now and people are not stupid. But it seems that some people are trying to push the same agenda of the Cold War of conspiracy theories and amazing achievements that are very easily traced and validated.
I think that there is something that happens, a phenomenon that happens around a conspiracy theory, where if you believe in a conspiracy theory, then every critique of that theory is simply more proof that the conspiracy exists. And I think that that's something that goes on in the person of Donald Trump.
Let`s talk conspiracy theories here. All of a sudden today - first of all, it`s the hunger games at this point.All these people, establishment people, whether it`s Bob Dole or others saying yes - you know, Orrin Hatch saying actually, I`d take [Donald] Trump over [Ted]Cruz.
And to answer the question that people have about this conspiracy theory that he has a pack in his back, my answer is, if someone was feeding him answers, couldn't they be able to feed him better ones than he came up with?
Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends
or simply: