Robert B. Laughlin Quotes

The reason con artists get away with what they get away with is, their victims are ashamed of their own blindness and their own gullibility, and they tend to just quietly go away.

People will buy snake oil from anybody who seems to be selling it in a persuasive way.

I went to Vegas for 22 years, married some absolutely charming women, and gave them all my money.

It's hard finding people you trust or who aren't going to take your money. Everyone wants to get a piece of whatever you're doing. It's a nightmare.

It doesn't matter how rich you are - you know when you're being ripped off.

Anyone who wants to sell you overnight success or wealth is not interested in your success; they are interested in your money.

The sad truth is that most of my husbands turned out to be convincing liars.

A certain portion of the human race / Has certainly a taste for being diddled.

In India, people still want an image to connect to and, even if it's a false one, they will stick to it. We are ready and want to be fooled by someone or the other, be it a baba or a politician.

The only way you can be a mark is if you want something for nothing. If you're greedy, you're set up.

The most important thing for any con artist is never to think like a mark. Marks think they can get something for nothing. Marks think they can get what they don’t deserve and could never deserve. Marks are stupid and pathetic and sad. Marks think they’re going to go home one night and have the girl they’ve loved since they were a kid suddenly love them back. Marks forget that whenever something’s too good to be true, that’s because it’s a con.

More are taken in by hope than by cunning.

We’re flimflam artists. But remember, sonny, you can’t con people unless they’re greedy to begin with. W. C. Fields had it right. You can’t cheat an honest man.

...instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility.

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.

Marks forget that whenever something's too good to be true, that's because it's a con.

As I grew up I got cynical. I'd see Mother enthusiastic and involved with charlatans. Numerologists and astrologists who charged five hundred dollars for a 'reading' which was so vague you could twist the meaning any way you wanted.

I remember desperately trying to convince my wife that what I was believing was real - that I was being followed, that I was involved in some type of mind-control experiment. I couldn't understand why she couldn't believe me.

We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.

Kids, Madison Avenue is lying to you. Your parents are lying to you. The president is lying to you.

Just like my Uncle Charlie used to say, just before he sprung the trap: He said, "You can't cheat and honest man! Never give a sucker an even break or smarten up a chump!

What have I got in my pocket?" he said aloud. He was talking to himself, but Gollum thought it was a riddle, and he was frightfully upset. "Not fair! not fair!" he hissed. "It isn't fair, my precious, is it, to ask us what it's got in it's nassty little pocketsess?

Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.

No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.