Michael A. Stackpole Quotes

Folks will say anything, and next time round they'll believe it.

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

Some people believe everything they see on TV. People, it's called tel-lie-vision!

People are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one.

The Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

All it takes is one generation to brainwash a population and convince them that reality doesn't exist

He thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

Facts are now coming to light that show Muslims were not responsible for 9/11. A policy came out of the Pentagon to make war and to pit the Muslims against each other and rip up these "cells of terror."

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Hitler and Joseph Goebbels understood that if you say something loud and long enough many people will believe it. A good journalist's first priority should be to separate propaganda from fact - but sometimes its very hard to do that.

The sad truth about humanity...is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

I can smell bullshit from a mile away but it's so much harder to detect when it's around you all day.

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.

Beware the writer who always encloses the word *reality* in quotation marks: He's trying to slip something over on you. Or into you.

Donald Trump is a master salesman. And he creates his own reality. So if he tells you, "This is a middle-class tax cut, and I, Donald Trump, won't benefit," he expects you to believe that. It doesn't matter that it's not true. It's he said it, you're supposed to believe it. And that's how he's run his entire administration. If he says it, that makes it true.

Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.

If you repeat something long enough people believe it's what happened.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

Syllogisms а la mode - If you are against labor racketeers, then you are against the working man. If you are against demagogues, then you are against democracy. If you are against Christianity, then you are against God. If you are against trying a can of Old Dr. Quack's Cancer Salve, then you are in favor of letting Uncle Julius die.

How gullible are you? Is your gullibility located in some "gullibility center" in your brain? Could a neurosurgeon reach in and perform some delicate operation to lower your gullibility, otherwise leaving you alone? If you believe this, you are pretty gullible, and should perhaps consider such an operation.

So easy are men to be drawn to believe any thing, from such men as have gotten credit with them; and can with gentleness and dexterity take hold of their fear and ignorance.

We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States.