Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions.

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

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Lust and greed are more gullible than innocence.

There are more fools than knaves in the world, else the knaves would not have enough to live upon.

Oh mortal man, is there anything you cannot be made to believe?

We wouldn’t want to live in a world where we couldn’t be conned. Because, in effect, we would then be living in a world where we mistrusted or refused to trust anyone.

... pure and intelligent women can be deceived and misled by the baser sort, their very innocence and experience making them credulous and the helpless tools of the guilty and bold.

I was a magnet for people who want to take advantage of people like me, who think they're part of this life but they're not.

It is a blind goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.

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.

I was so gullible as a kid.

I like being innocent, but know now when I am being taken for a ride.

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled.

People in great institutions are occasionally credulous.

It's easy to be led astray when you're so broken. People take advantage of you.

I'm not known for my intellectual range and tricks have been played on me.

I've always been struck by how unsuspicious people are in general, if you tell them what you're about.

No man is so much a fool as not to have wit enough sometimes to be a knave; nor any so cunning a knave as not to have the weakness sometimes to play the fool.

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

The only disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity.

Half the world is composed of idiots, the other half of people clever enough to take indecent advantage of them.

After taking advantage of the weakness, the credulity and the ignorance of the weakest and the most ignorant of the people, those sly, cunning politicians easily had them believe whatever they wanted. Consequently, they made them accept with respect and submission, willingly or not, all the laws they wanted to establish.

The more you are in public life, the more you wonder at the credulity of the average human being.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.