Ploy Quotes

• the old ploy of the powerful: never refuse when you can confuse. Distraction and delay are always better than obstruction.

  Helen McCloy

  Powerful, Delay, Distraction

  Helen McCloy (1977). “The Impostor: A Novel of Suspense”, Dodd Mead

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Each of us can, by ploy or gambit, most naturally gain the advantage.

  Stephen Potter

  Gains, Gambit, Advantage

  'Lifemanship' (1950) p. 15

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size.

  Louise Erdrich

  Nature, Cutting, Feet

  Louise Erdrich (2010). “Love Medicine”, p.214, Odyssey Editions

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Authentic gratitude is much more rare and precious than expressions of gratitude which are often empty courtesies or simply tactical ploys to encourage further gifts or kindnesses.

  Michael Josephson

  Gratitude, Kindness, Expression

  4 Copy quote

• Depression does tremendous damage. Use every ploy you can think of to bring yourself to joy.

  Nachman of Breslov

  Thinking, Joy, Doe

  23 Copy quote

• I love pizza so much, I would marry pizza, but it would just be an elaborate ploy to eat her whole family at the reception.

  Mike Birbiglia

  Whole Family, Reception, Pizza

  Mike Birbiglia (2012). “Sleepwalk with Me: And Other Painfully True Stories”, p.152, Simon and Schuster

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• Oh, this was the great ploy of Satan in that kingdom of his: to display such blatant evil one could almost believe one's own secret sin didn't matter.

  Corrie Ten Boom

  Believe, Evil, Secret

  Corrie ten Boom, Elizabeth Sherrill, John Sherrill (2006). “The Hiding Place”, p.224, Chosen Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• So, I think that for the authorities to say now that calling for sanctions will prevent dialogue is a ploy to stop us from supporting sanctions. It has to be the other way around: dialogue first, then we stop our call for sanctions, because sanctions make people understand that you cannot exercise repression and at the same time expect international support.

  Aung San Suu Kyi

  Exercise, Thinking, People

  3 Copy quote

• To hear an artist be transparent is one of the greatest things they could ever do for their fans. I love that, when I see my fans on the road we have real conversations and it's not even that I do it as some big ploy to have album sales. I do it because it's important for them to understand who I am. So, whatever backlash comes along with me being transparent, there's nothing I can do about it.

  Sevyn Streeter

  Real, Artist, Who I Am

  Source: www.refinery29.com

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Failing to induce adulation and submissiveness, the Angkar could only generate hatred. If concealment was the ultimate ploy for the leadership, it backfired and whipped up abhorrence in the
  context of total revolution. This might be one of the explanations why repression assumed proportions unknown in other Communist countries. The mask of Angkar was a good tactic to grab
  power, but it proved disastrous in government.

  Pol Pot

  Country, Government, Hatred

  50 Copy quote

• Seducing one's neighbor to a good opinion and then afterwards believing devoutly in this neighbor's opinion--who can match women in this clever ploy?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Clever, Women, Believe

  4 Copy quote

• We speak of facts, yet facts exist only partially to us if they are not repeated and re-created through emotions, thoughts and feelings. To me it seemed as if we had not really existed, or only half existed, because we could not imaginatively realize ourselves and communicate to the world, because we had used works of imagination to serve as handmaidens to some political ploy.

  Azar Nafisi

  Imagination, Political, Feelings

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.339, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You might think the word "homemade" is just a word we use as a marketing ploy. But what you don't realize is that the staff sleeps here at night. If your tablecloth is wrinkled, that's why.

  Scott Adams

  Sleep, Night, Thinking

  3 Copy quote

• The act is in itself a lie. You're faking something. The girl is lying there, she's pretending that she doesn't know the camera's on, she's getting banged, and "accidentally" it leaks out? Everyone leaks their own sex tapes! That's a ploy to get famous - that's not about the sex. It's not like when Madonna did her Sex book, and it was an artistic endeavor where she acknowledged it and spoke about it and was so upfront about it. It's different. It's not upfront. It's not honest. It's a ploy to get famous.

  Kristen Stewart

  Girl, Sex, Lying

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think that [Jay] Gould's separate compartments was a purely political ploy to win middle-of-the-road religious people to the science camp. But it's a very empty idea. There are plenty of places where religion does not keep off the scientific turf.

  Richard Dawkins

  Religious, Thinking, Winning

  Source: inters.org

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.

  Zadie Smith

  Cynical, Marketing, Quirky

  9 Copy quote

• Bush proposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. Some saw the move as an attempt to preserve traditional values, while others saw it as a cynical ploy to ensure that Vice President... Cheney will never have to pay for his gay daughter's wedding.

  Jon Stewart

  Daughter, Moving, Gay

  7 Copy quote

• More philosophically-minded critics regarded Einstein's argument for relativity as little more than a logical bait-and-switch ploy: "[T]he supposition of most expounders of the Special Theory, that Einstein has proved the relativity of simultaneity in general - or that his 'simultaneity' is something more than a logical artefact - must manifestly be given up.

  Arthur Oncken Lovejoy

  Special, Bait, Littles

  4 Copy quote

• Bill Clinton gives the appearance of taking stands-for some sort of tax cut, some sort of welfare reform, some sort of balanced budget-but these are ploys, mirages: they exist only to undermine positions taken by the Republicans. He doesn't fight for anything substantive-except of course, re-election. ...He has fallen into the dangerous habit of lip synching the presidency: he gives the appearance of leadership, but not the substance.

  Joe Klein

  Taken, Fighting, Cutting

  3 Copy quote

• Before it was emails, it was Benghazi, and the Republicans were stirring up so much controversy about that. And I testified for 11 hours, answered their questions. They basically said yeah, didn't get her. We tried. That was all a political ploy.

  Hillary Clinton

  Political, Email, Republican

  Hillary Clinton's speech at the Clinton-Sanders Democratic presidential debate in Durham, New Hampshire, hosted by MSNBC, www.nytimes.com. February 4, 2016.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source

• Narratives are not fixed. We change our narratives for ourselves and we change them not necessarily deliberately. In other words, some people do, some people will constantly reconstruct their biography for external purposes, it's a very interesting political ploy.

  Antonio Damasio

  People, Interesting, Political

  Interviewwith David Hirschman, bigthink.com. August 10, 2010.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• All through my life I never did believe in human measurement. Numbers, time, inches, feet. All are just ploys for cutting nature down to size. I know the grand scheme of the world is beyond our brains to fathom, so I don't try, just let it in.

  Louise Erdrich

  Believe, Cutting, Feet

  Louise Erdrich (2010). “Love Medicine”, p.214, Odyssey Editions

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The move to tax Internet sales, clothed as a 'fairness' issue, is the typical 'wolf-in-sheep's-clothing' ploy so often used by governments unwilling to cut expenditures to match revenues. It matters not whether its proponents have a 'D' or an 'R' after their name. It is a tax increase in either case.

  Bob Barr

  Moving, Cutting, Names

  6 Copy quote

• The world is a chessboard, Madam, on which we play out our ploys and follies. You are the Queen, of course. Your moves are the strongest. For myself, I claim only to be a knight, advancing in a crooked progress. Do we move ourselves, do you think, or does a great gloved hand place on our squares

  Catherine Fisher

  Life, Queens, Moving

  Catherine Fisher (2010). “Sapphique”, p.130, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The question is, what are you going to do?" It turns out the question that's been eating away at me has only ever had one possible answer. But it took Peeta's ploy for me to recognize it. What am I going to do? I take a deep breath. My arms rise slightly - as if recalling the black-and-white wings Cinna gave me - then come to rest at my sides. "I'm going to be the Mockingjay.

  Suzanne Collins

  Black And White, Wings, Answers

  Suzanne Collins (2010). “Mockingjay (The Hunger Games, Book 3)”, p.31, Scholastic Inc.

  3 Copy quote

  Show source