Thomas Vernor Smith Quotes

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.

People will believe absurd things - in the 19th century and now.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

Often I look back and see that I had been many kinds of a fool-and that I had been happy in being this or that kind of fool.

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

Since the masses are always eager to believe something, for their benefit nothing is so easy to arrange as facts.

Ignorance is the mother of all evils.

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

The wretched world lies now under the tyranny of foolishness; things [witches and witchcraft] are believed by Christians of such absurdity as no one ever could aforetime induce the heathen to believe.

All the Khmer leaders and nobles, all the district chiefs and all the common people are ignorant, stupid, foolish and gullible. They have no idea what is true and what is false.

We have fools in all sects, and impostors in most.

Stupid is a great force in human affairs.

I never cease being dumbfounded by the unbelievable things people believe.

I allowed myself to be taken in by the intellectuals. I believed too much in the Polish intellectuals and followed their advice.

Society and the system and politicians don't want people to be aware of things. They want people to believe what they have to show 'em.

Ignorance and superstition ever bear a close and mathematical relation to each other.

In the middle ages when people were convinced there were witches, they certainly found them.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

... a fool

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are intentionally bad.

It is a stupid goose that listens to the fox preach.

Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.