Christopher Moore Quotes

Politics—where they pat you on the back so they'll know where to stick the knife.

The most guileful amongst the reporters are those who appear friendly and smile and seem to be supportive. They are the ones who will seek to gut you on every occasion.

Many undoubtedly owe their good fortune to the circumstance that they possess a pleasing smile with which they win hearts. Yet these hearts would do better to beware and to learn from Hamlet's tables that one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.

A Falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing; but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.

This perplexing, good natured boy who can spin out lies so convincingly to be hopelessly in love with me ... and I admit it there are moments when he makes me believe it myself.

Sometimes I can't tell that someone is a selective asshole because they're so nice to me and the people around me that I don't realize it until someone else says, "You know, that person is an asshole." So I'll be fooled by selective assholes sometimes . . . lately.

Loyalty is in most people only a ruse used by self-interest to attract confidence.

It is so much in the nature of men to overreach and deceive one another, that their very sports and plays are founded on that principle.

Never trust a species that grins all the time. It’s up to something.

He looked like the sort of person who would tell you that he did not have an umbrella to lend you when he actually had several and simply wanted to see you get soaked.

The fawning courtier and the surly squire often mean the same thing,--each his own interest.

I'm sick of people lying to me for my own good. Because really it's mostly for their own good.

The true manipulator never has a reputation for manipulating.

It isn't kind to cultivate a friendship just so one will have an audience.

Beware of anyone who claims to be neutral, for they always have an agenda.

Take care how you listen to the voice of the flatterer, who, in return for his little stock, expects to derive from you considerable advantage. If one day you do not comply with his wishes, be imputes to you two hundred defects instead of perfections.

The reply is, that one ought to be both feared and loved, but as it is difficult for the two to go together, it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting. For it may be said of men in general that they are ungrateful, voluble, dissemblers, anxious to avoid danger, and covetous of gain; as long as you benefit them, they are entirely yours; they offer you their blood, their goods, their life, and their children, as I have before said, when the necessity is remote; but when it approaches, they revolt.

The woman who says, 'My kids are all speaking to one another and they love us' is a psychopathic liar.

It is easier to deceive yourself, and to do so unperceived, than to deceive another.

Thing is, while I know better, I like sounding ignorant. Talk like this and people figure you're about as dumb as a fencepost, which suits me fine. Makes it all that much easier to take advantage of 'em.

I am older than you. Believe me, there is no other way to live on earth. Men are not open to truth or reason. They cannot be reached by a rational argument. The mind is powerless against them. Yet we have to deal with them. If we want to accomplish anything, we have to deceive them into letting us accomplish it. Or force them. They understand nothing else. We cannot expect their support for any endeavor of the intellect, for any goal of the spirit. They are nothing but vicious animals. They are greedy, self-indulgent, predatory dollar-chasers

I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain....[love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape.

Trust is always a good idea. For someone else.

pretense is the oil that lubricates society.