Misdirection Quotes

• Misdirection. What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes.

  John Travolta

  Believe, Eye, Mind

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• Religion is a salve for confusion and misdirection.

  Robert Kennedy

  Confusion

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• We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.

  Scott Lynch

  Believe, Hard Work, Bullshit

  Scott Lynch (2008). “The Lies of Locke Lamora: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book One”, p.25, Hachette UK

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• The map had been the first form of misdirection, for what is a map but a way of emphasizing some things and making other things invisible?

  Jeff VanderMeer

  Way, Firsts, Maps

  Jeff VanderMeer (2014). “Annihilation: A Novel”, p.66, Macmillan

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• When you've managed to stumble directly into the heart of the unknown - either through the misdirection of others, or better yet, through your own creative ineptitude - there is no one there to hold your hand or tell you what to do. In those bad lost moments, in the times when are advised not to panic, we own the unknown, and the world belongs to us. The child within has full reign. Few of us are ever so free

  Tim Cahill

  Children, Heart, Hands

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• The greater the intellect, the more ease in its misdirection.

  David Mamet

  Ease, Intellect, Greater

  David Mamet (2015). “Mamet Plays: 5: Boston Marriage; Dr Faustus; Romance”, p.104, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Free speech gives us the ability to react vigorously with effective arguments and expose the weakness and misdirection of the other side's claims.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Giving, Weakness, Speech

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• Magic consists of creating, by misdirection of the senses, the mental impression of supernatural agency at work. That, and only that, is what modern magic really is, and that meaning alone is now assignable to the term.

  John Nevil Maskelyne

  Agency, Creating, Magic

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• Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.

  William Least Heat-Moon

  Errors, Discovery, Joy

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• The media, I think, have to be accountable for some of the misdirection that is put forward in politics in some of the misapprehension, maybe even some of the lack of confidence in the political process. Because the most benign, frank thought can be twisted and portrayed as something that it really wasn't intended to.

  Cory Bernardi

  Thinking, Media, Political

  Source: www.abc.net.au

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• To combat depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection -- a procedure which can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Evil, Deception

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• The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different than wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown.

  Chuck Klosterman

  Witty, Media, People

  Chuck Klosterman (2004). “Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto”, p.6, Simon and Schuster

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• The writers are very good about misdirection and changeups, and that's what's great about it. We always think we know what's going to happen and then they throw a curveball that you don't see coming.

  Mike Colter

  Thinking, Curveballs, Very Good

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Conversing with children is a fine art.... An art form that demands large amounts of both honesty and misdirection. Or maybe discretion is a better word.

  Miriam Toews

  Art, Children, Honesty

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• Misdirection is one of my strengths.

  Erin Morgenstern

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• Of course, to avoid getting stuck in that convo with someone you dislike or feel uncomfortable around, don't be passive, be proactive. Do not let them direct your interaction on their terms, do it on yours. Ask a Misdirection Question--something too difficult to answer quickly--e.g., 'What's Congress up to?' or 'You ever learn any cool science?' When you ask the question, don't make eye contact, keep moving and get out of there. Do not wait for a response and deny ever asking it. Repeat these actions until you are never again spoken to by that individual (about four times).

  Eugene Mirman

  Moving, Eye, Waiting

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• there is ten times more in the world than would maintain all in yet unknown luxury. Yet how much misery there is in our midst; not because there is not enough, but owing to the misdirection of it.

  Ernestine Rose

  Luxury, World, Owing

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• We know there are no weapons of mass destruction. But there are weapons of misdirection. Millions without health insurance, poverty abounds. For war, billions more, but no more for the poor.

  Joseph Lowery

  War, Mass Destruction, Weapons

  Source: www.nbcnews.com

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• To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Mean, Evil, Expansion

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• Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.

  Richard Whately

  Religious, Men, Vanity

  Richard Whately (1856). “Thoughts and Apophthegms: From the Writings of Archbishop Whateley”, p.59

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