W. C. Fields Quotes

The con movie is a little bit different where maybe we tell you what we're going to do but it never goes down the way you expect because there's so much double-crossing and cheats and lies going on along the whole way.

Did I run real swindles? Oh, yeah. I mean, I started as a - on the street. I did not begin as a performer. I began running the shell game.

Kevin was a shell game in which all three cups were empty.

For the grifter, ripping people off is seldom the point. The grifter is an artiste who invests in the long con.

Three-card monte is one of the most persistent and effective cons in history. The games still pop up along city streets. But we tend to dismiss the victims as rubes.

My family has something of a special relationship with confidence tricks: my grandfather was a professional swindler.

I love con-men characters in film.

I've always loved movies about con men. I think con men are as American as apple pie.

I’ve been a con artist since I was 16 and trying to get my dad to buy me a car. I never succeeded, but I learnt a lot of tactics.

It was the heart of any scam or fiddle -- keep the punter uncertain, or, if he is certain, make him certain of the wrong thing.

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone’s watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he’s actually sawing a girl in half. You think he’s doing one trick when he’s actually doing another. You think that I’m dying, but I’m laughing at you.

So far I’m not seeing a lot of difference between me and a carnival con-man.

I know magicians and I know magic and I say this: all magicians lie and this one more than most.

You set me up," I say. "One big con. You can't blame me because I turned out not to be gullible enough. You can't blame the mark. That's not how it works. Have some respect for the nature of the game.

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!

A successful swindler has to be a great salesman even more than a great actor.

To obfuscate the reconstruction of the effect - when a magician is fooled by another magician doing magic. In my career that's not been the major passion, but it's been the passion of a number of my mentors. The crowning achievement for them would be to create magic good enough to fool other magicians.

This is very clever. They have created a system to cheat.

Magic is an art form where you lie and tell people you are lying.

If you do sleight of hand without trying to cheat someone, that's what magic is.

The best confidence artist makes us feel not as if we're being taken for a ride but as if we are genuinely wonderful human beings who are acting the way wonderful human beings act and getting what we deserve.

I know every trick in the book, in terms of schemes and fraud.

In my business, my job is to make people believe they are seeing something they're not seeing.

Magic has both feet planted in cheap vaudeville and childish posturing; in dishonesty and therefore not in art.

The name 'con artist' really does capture it. They're artists, and I have admiration for all artists.