Dupes Quotes - Page 2

• Dishonesty is the raw material not of quacks only, but also in great part dupes.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Lying, Raw Materials, Dishonesty

  Thomas Carlyle, Chris Vanden Bossche (2002). “Historical Essays”, p.43, Univ of California Press

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• There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from anothe quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence. I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men and become the instruments of their own undoing.

  Daniel Webster

  Powerful, Men, People

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• It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Ambition, Victim, Martyr

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• It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Hypocrite, Simple, Men

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• It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep, and I had fallen into the meanest type of self-deception in making myself believe that all this was in preparation for great things to come.

  Jane Addams

  Believe, Self, Promise

  Jane Addams (2010). “The Selected Papers of Jane Addams: Vol. 2: Venturing into Usefulness”, p.601, University of Illinois Press

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• It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep.

  Jane Addams

  Promise, Purpose, Hull House

  Jane Addams (2012). “Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes”, p.56, Courier Corporation

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• There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach "a healthy skepticism." They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific.

  Anthony Standen

  Teacher, Science, Thinking

  Anthony Standen (1950). “Science is a sacred cow”

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• The greatest joy a petty soul can taste is to dupe a great soul and catch it in a snare.

  Honore de Balzac

  Joy, Soul, Taste

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• Knowledge is power. Unfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on creating, ambitiously, till they have stunned their native initiative and made their thoughts weak.

  Clarence Day

  Knowledge, Creating, Initiative

  Clarence Day (2017). “This Simian World”, p.24, Litres

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• If often happens too, both in courts and in cabinets, that there are two things going on together,--a main plot and an under-plot; and he that understands only one of them will, in all probability, be the dupe of both. A mistress may rule a monarch, but some obscure favorite may rule the mistress.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Two, Mistress, Together

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.56

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• The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

  Marcel Proust

  Memories, Lying, Men

  Marcel Proust (2010). “In Search Of Lost Time, Vol 5: The Captive & The Fugitive”, p.515, Random House

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• The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself.

  John Calvin

  Heart, Vanity, Hypocrisy

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• Wisdom consists in rising superior both to madness and to common sense, and is lending oneself to the universal illusion without becoming its dupe.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Wisdom, Common Sense, Rising

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• Man is the yokel par excellence, the booby unmatchable, the king dupe of the cosmos. He is chronically and unescapably deceived, not only by the other animals and by the delusive face of nature herself--by his incomparable talent for searching out and embracing what is false, and for overlooking and denying what is true.

  H. L. Mencken

  Kings, Animal, Men

  H. L. Mencken (2009). “Prejudices: Third Series”, p.128, Cosimo, Inc.

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• We only make a dupe of the friend whose advice we ask, for we never tell him all; and it is usually what we have left unsaid that decides our conduct.

  Diane de Poitiers

  Advice, Unsaid, Left

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• How fondly swindlers coddle their dupes! No mother is as caressing or thoughtful towards her adored child as a merchant in hypocrisy toward his milch-cow.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Children, Thoughtful

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• The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Eye, People, Voting

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Vanity, Swindlers

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• Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Yield, Mind

  Thomas Jefferson (2012). “The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 8: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815: 1 October 1814 to 31 August 1815”, p.212, Princeton University Press

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• When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Ambition, Two, Mad

  Percy Bysshe Shelley, Donald H. Reiman, Neil Fraistat (2004). “The Complete Poetry of Percy Bysshe Shelley”, p.211, JHU Press

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• [My father] had this quirky thing of not believing in gravity. And giving me a constant headache about that one. He would say if I showed any interest in gravity, I was becoming a dupe of the system. He could see indications I was beginning to believe in it.

  Paul Laffoley

  Father, Believe, Giving

  Source: www.paranoiamagazine.com

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• Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

  Mason Cooley

  Hope, Fear, Optimism

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• We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Men, Air

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.14

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• The ancient gentleman who has seen the world, who is profoundly experienced, and much too deep to be the dupe of an age so shallow as this, is to be won by an admiring glance at the brilliancy of his knee-buckle; praise his very pigtail, and you may lead him by it.

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Gentleman, Age, World

  "Sketches from Life" by Laman Blanchard. "That Old Birds are not to be Caught with Chaff", 1846.

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• I love advertising because I love lying. I think spending your life trying to dupe innocent people out of hard-won earnings to buy useless, low-quality, misrepresented items and services is an excellent use of your energy.

  Jerry Seinfeld

  Wisdom, Lying, Thinking

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