Niccolo Machiavelli Quotes

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

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.

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.

There had never been a shortage of fools in the world

Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

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

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

You've gotta be slightly stupid.

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.

Only the stupidest calves choose their own butcher.

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

We foolishly did not realize Saddam was stupid.

It is the fool who thinks he cannot be fooled.

However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him.

No sooner does man discover intelligence than he tries to involve it in his own stupidity.

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

Ninety-nine percent of the people in the world are fools and the rest of us are in great danger of contagion.

He doubts nothing who knows nothing.

Stupidity is much the same all the world over.

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

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

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.