Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach Quotes

Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.

Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.

Whoever believes in a man is very foolish.

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.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

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.

Who doesn't know anything, has to believe everything.

A man of good sense always believes what he is told, and what he finds written down.

Just believe everything I tell you, and it will all be very, very simple.' Ah, well, I'm not sure I believe that.

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

He who knows what he is told must know a lot of things that are not so.

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

Many people believe everything others say, even though what they see with their own eyes, should be enough to tell them otherwise.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

People in great institutions are occasionally credulous.

I believe anything that anyone tells me. I have found that that is the best way to go through life. When I was younger, I used to be more skeptical, but then I found out that most things were true. So I believe tabloids. I believe legends. I believe anything anyone tells me.

My parents were like the kind of people who read the 'Enquirer' and believed everything it said.

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

He doubts nothing who knows nothing.

Credulity without enquiry is a sure way to deceive oneself.

It is equally a fault to believe all men or to believe none.

The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality.

He that believes all misseth; he that believes nothing, hits not.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.

As I say, it never ceases to amaze me how gullible some of our Church members are.