Nia Vardalos Quotes

Am I Machiavellian? I don't think I'm quite the mastermind people would have me be. Everything I do tends to be very successful and it may have something to do with the fact that I'm very good, not necessarily that I manipulate. But that doesn't often occur to people.

In politics, they play games. In Hollywood, they play games. I think that, overall, everybody is trying to do whatever it takes to get ahead.

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

It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.

Do you know how a man makes his way here? By brilliant genius or by skilful corruption. You must either cut your way through these masses of men like a cannon ball, or steal among them like a plague.

Cunning has effect from the credulity of others, rather than from the abilities of those who are cunning. It requires no extraordinary talents to lie and deceive.

Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve.

Major Major had lied, and it was good. He was not really surprised that it was good, for he had observed that people who did lie were, on the whole, more resourceful and ambitious and successful than people who did not lie.

There's room at the top they are telling you still, but first you must learn how to smile as you kill.

Sometimes women entrepreneurs are their own challenge, [in terms of] believing in themselves. There is no need to apologise for being ambitious.

To be an overachiever you have to be an over believer.

It is sometimes necessary to play the fool to avoid being deceived by cunning men.

Cunning has only private selfish aims, and sticks at nothing which may make them succeed. Discretion has large and extended views, and, like a well-formed eye, commands a whole horizon; cunning is a kind of shortsightedness, that discovers the minutest objects which are near at hand, but is not able to discern things at a distance.

You don't get on by being original. You don't get on by being bright. You don't get on by being strong. You get on by being a subtle crook.

What is it men cannot be made to believe!

Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.

What valor cannot win, flattery may.

I just wanted to make a million dollars. But I couldn't sing and I couldn't play ball, so I said to my mother, 'How am I going to make a million dollars?' And she said to me, 'Son, if you believe you can do it, you will.'

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does.

The whole power of cunning is privative; to say nothing, and to do nothing , is the utmost of its reach. Yet men, thus narrow by nature and mean by art, are sometimes able to rise by the miscarriages of bravery and the openness of integrity, and, watching failures and snatching opportunities, obtain advantages which belong to higher characters.

Don't you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them?

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

Don't look over your shoulder and don't use or abuse others to get ahead. Keep your eyes focused on your goals and keep working for what you believe in and what you want to accomplish.

Donald Trump doesn't have clear contact with reality, though I'm not sure it qualifies as a bona fide delusion. He needs things to be a certain way even though they aren't, and that's one reason he lies. There can also be a conscious manipulative element to it. When he put forward, and politically thrived on, the falsehood of President Obama's birth in Kenya, outside the United States, he was manipulating that lie as well as undoubtedly believing it in part, at least in a segment of his personality.