Detector Quotes & Sayings

Well," Carole said, turning in her seat, "after being fingerprinted and being given a lie detector test, I'll never complain again about going to the gynecologist. — Stephanie Bond

Into a nondescript one-story building on the western side of the compound, passing through a security door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Through a metal detector manned by heavily armed, stone-faced soldiers. Into an elevator that carries us four stories beneath the earth. Reznik doesn't talk. He doesn't even look at me. I have a pretty good idea where we're going, but no idea why. I nervously pick at the front of my new uniform. — Rick Yancey

Lie Detector Says — Gillibran Brown

If he had never created Wonder Woman, William Moulton Marston would be remembered for this experiment. He invented the lie detector test. A century on, it's still in use. It's also all over Wonder Woman. "Come, Elva, you'll have to take a lie detector test," Diana Prince tells Elva Dove, a secretary she suspects of spying, as she drags her down a hallway. "I'll ask you questions," Diana says, strapping Elva to the machine while Trevor looks on. "Answer truthfully or your blood pressure curve will go up. "Did you take that rubber report from the secret files?" Diana asks. "No, no!" Elva insists. "Well, I'll be jiggered," Trevor exclaims, reading the graph. "She is lying. — Jill Lepore

Dr. Deveaux stopped and looked at me hard. He leaned in and whispered, 'The rest is all bullshit, Miss Drake. It's as simple as that. Your purpose here in life is to discern the real thing from the bullshit, and then to choose the non-bullshit. Think of the opportunity that God has given you to study as the means by which to attain your own personal bullshit detector. Sometimes that will be particularly difficult, because those who proclaim to know the truth, well intentioned or not, are spewing the most bullshit. But you will know when you have been properly ravished. And then you'll see, how the entire world is eyeball deep in it and that we choose it, and that we choose it every day. But the good news is that, although we struggle with it, there is a way out. Yes, there is a very worthy antidote and option to all the bullshit. — Carolyn Weber

Many criminals believe what they say is true; they could pass a lie detector test. — Michael Moore

I told the truth, and I did it on national TV in a lie-detector test. — Paula Jones

My own view is that if you filled every member of the parliamentary Labour party with a truth drug and lashed them to a polygraph lie detector, very, very few of them would support foundation hospitals. — Frank Dobson

Are you French?' I asked instead.

'Oui!'

Foreign. Foreign spy. French Communist Party acted on Stalin's instructions during part of World War II. French Communist spy.

Stop it stop it stop it

I turned to Art, a black kid who was a foot and a half taller than me and whose pecs were about to burst of his shirt and eat someone. I gave him a two on the delusion detector. I didn't trust those pecs.

'Hi,' he rumbled.

I waved weakly. — Francesca Zappia

I want to live in an honest house
where the motion detector is so sharp
it knows when my thoughts leave the room.

I want a clap on lamp that works as a polygraph;
when you swear you still love me, the lights flicker. — Megan Falley

Murderers with severe personality disorders, police had learned, sometimes could fool a lie detector because they lacked shame and guilt, and didn't feel the normal stress when lying. — Michael Benson

In this era of world leadership, the metal detector is the altar and the minicam may be god. — Hugh Sidey

Yeah, I don't have a Yale degree but my bullshit detector is excellent. Top drawer, even. — Caroline Kepnes

New Rule: Instead of using their $10 billion atom-smashing Large Hadron Collider to re-create the Big Bang by melting atom parts in temperatures a million times hotter than the sun, scientists should not do that. I'm just sayin' it sounds dangerous. I'm as interested as the next guy in determining the origin of matter, but first couldn't we solve some simple mystery, like why some-detector batteries always die at four a.m.? — Bill Maher

To become a Secret Service agent, applicants must pass a polygraph exam. But after being hired, agents are never required to undergo regular lie detector testing again. — Ronald Kessler

Like my father, I am very impatient. I have a strong bullshit detector. I may finish one book in twenty that I have started. — John Fante

This is a frame. I think Mason Verger is trying to capture Dr. Lecter himself for purposes of personal revenge. I think he just missed him in Florence. I think Mr. Krendler may be in collusion with Verger and wants the FBI's effort against Dr. Lecter to work for Verger. I think Paul Krendler of the Department of Justice is making money out of this and I think he is willing to destroy me to do it. Mr. Krendler has behaved toward me before in an inappropriate manner and is acting now out of spite as well as financial self-interest. Only this week he called me a 'cornpone country pussy.' I would challenge Mr. Krendler before this body to take a lie detector test with me on these matters. I'm at your convenience. We could do it now. — Thomas Harris

If you have something to hide, I'm your worst nightmare. I'm a living, breathing, and walking lie detector. I can smell you down to the type of soap you use, your morning ritual, and the last time you took a hand and stroked your favorite body part. Everything leaves behind a scent ... Everything. — Ashley Jeffery

To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken. — Dark Jar Tin Zoo

In order to be a great writer a person must have a built-in, shockproof crap detector. — Ernest Hemingway,

When the National Security Agency recruited me, they put me through a day of lie detector tests. They found out all my weaknesses and immediately seduced me. They used the strongest drugs in our culture, sex, power and money, to win me over. — John Perkins

Is there somebody out there? Amy, is that you?" her mother called.
"No. Tell me this isn't happening." Quinn rested his forehead against hers. "Has she got a wiretap on you or something? I swear, she's like a walking hard-on detector."
Amy bit her lip, trying not to laugh. Quinn levered himself up on his arms.
"Mrs. P., if you value your life, you'll go back inside and turn off the light right now. — Sarah Mayberry

If we were building a consciousness detector, Searle would want it to ascertain that it was squirting biological neurotransmitters. American philosopher Daniel Dennett (born in 1942) would be more flexible on substrate, but might want to determine whether or not the system contained a model of itself and of its own performance. That view comes closer to my own, but at its core is still a philosophical assumption. — Ray Kurzweil

Laughter is sort of a natural truth detector. If you laugh at something, it's probably because there was some truth in it. — Bill Maher

Quantum particles do not behave like tennis balls, but like the quantum particles they are. To get from one place to another, they take all the possible paths in space and time as long as these paths link their starting point to their end point. The particle [...] literally went everywhere. Simultaneously. To the left and to the right of the post. And through it. And outside the room. And into the future and back - until the moment when it hit a detector on the wall. — Christophe Galfard

Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error. — Isabel Allende

The young man was sort of ... well ... peering at this shovel, and Lisey knew not by his face but by the whole awkward this-way-n-that jut of his lanky body that he didn't have any idea what he was seeing. It could have been an artillery shell, a bonsai tree, a radiation detector, or a china pig with a slot in its back for spare silver; it could have been a whang-dang-doodle, a phylactery testifying to the pompetus of love, or a cloche hat made out of coyote skin. It could have been the penis of the poet Pindar. This guy was too far gone to know. — Stephen King

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate. — Arthur Koestler

I took a lie detector test the other day. No, I didn't. — Steven Wright

Suddenly the light came on at the back of her parents' house, flooding the yard. "Is there somebody out there? Amy, is that you?" her mother called. "No. Tell me this isn't happening." Quinn rested his forehead against hers. "Has she got a wiretap on you or something? I swear, she's like a walking hard-on detector. — Sarah Mayberry

I am the Doctor of Democracy. I am America's Truth Detector. And as the Doctor of Democracy, the deal you have with your doctor isn't changing. You get to keep your doctor. You get to keep your plan. You get to keep your station. Nothing's changing, and it really never was gonna change. — Rush Limbaugh

Apply the lie detector to everything. You will be amazed at how many lies you will discover. Beware tough, you may discover that you are a lie. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I have metal in my body, so every time I go to an airport, the metal detector goes off. — Jesse Ventura

My iPod rumbles again. It's not actually an iPod. It doesn't play any music and the earbuds are just for show. It's a gadget that Sandor put together in his lab.
It's my Mogadorian detector. I call it my iMog. — Pittacus Lore

Everything is really something else in disguise. Of course she was no exception, she reminded herself. Everybody would assume that she was there as the Childersins' novelty pet, or as a Perfume-detector. Nobody would guess that she was there to look for the person who had stolen her history. — Frances Hardinge

He believes the world populated by obvious monsters. The most dangerous of us are the least obvious. He relies on his skill as a lie detector, reading and judging the conflicting emotions of others. — Karen Marie Moning

In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.
Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals. — Anna C. Salter

I'm pretty slapstick in my life but nobody sees that. You get typecast. I'm from New York and I have a sh*t-detector that's outspoken. I'm very streetwise and the producers detect that. So they get me on a movie and kill me. I go into their offices and I'm sure when I leave they say, 'You know, he'd be great to kill'. I've been killed every way you can imagine. — Lance Henriksen

Ignoring a baby's cry is like using earplugs to stop the distressing noise of a smoke detector. The sound of a smoke detector is meant to alert us to a serious matter that requires a response - and so is the cry of a baby. — Jan Hunt

His dad's a human lie detector," Ayden said.
"That's his power."
"Fascinating!" Jayden was almost gleeful.
"Yet another one you're immune to, so it seems. Like Tristan's hallucinating. And you can hold Matthias's whips. Perhaps you should try to drown me." I looked at him.
"Are you crazy? Next you'll want me to suffocate Logan!"
"Excellent," Jayden smiled.
"I hadn't thought of that."
"What?" Logan backed away.
A & E Kirk (2014-05-26). Drop Dead Demons: The Divinicus Nex Chronicles: Book 2 (Divinicus Nex Chronicles series) (p. 471). A&E Kirk. Kindle Edition. — A&E Kirk

Here's how I see your weight - it is your smoke detector. And we're all burning up the best part of our lives. I'd never thought of it that way before, but it was a true aha moment. My weight was an indicator warning, a flashing light blaring my disconnection from the center of myself. — Oprah Winfrey

Rather than be searched by hand, I chose to walk through the metal detector without my cart or my tank or even the plastic nubbins in my nose. Walking through the X-ray machine marked the first time I'd taken a step without oxygen in some months, and it felt pretty amazing to walk unencumbered like that, stepping across the Rubicon, the machine's silence acknowledging that I was, however briefly, a nonmetallicized creature. I felt a bodily sovereignty that I can't really describe except to say that when I was a kid I used to have a really heavy backpack that I carried everywhere with all my books in it, and if I walked around with the backpack for long enough, when I took it off I felt like I was floating. — John Green

It's disgraceful and embarrassing that the highest technology in a typical city high school in this country is the metal detector the students pass through at the front door. — Bran Ferren

There are photons that have been traveling for 30,000 years, and I'm ... snatching them from this journey and planting them into my digital detector. And then I started feeling bad for the photon, and I said maybe it wanted to continue but I got in its way. But then I said, no, those are probably happier photons than the one that slammed into the mountainside that will go unanalyzed and will not contribute to the depth of our understanding of the universe. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. — Ernest Hemingway,

I once procrastinated and kept delaying a spinal cord operation as a response to a back injury - and was completely cured of the back problem after a hiking vacation in the Alps, followed by weight-lifting sessions. These psychologists and economists want me to kill my naturalistic instinct (the inner b****t detector) that allowed me to delay the elective operation and minimize the risks - an insult to the antifragility of our bodies. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The lie detector didn't react to anything I said, but I wouldn't dare smile. — Embee

When you go into the psych ward, you can't have anything with you except colored pencils. You can't have any electronics. If you have a drawstring on your pants, a belt, shoelaces, a hood, or extra-long fabric, your very clothes are ripped off your back. They search you with a metal detector like you're a criminal, doing everything short of putting their hand up your butt. Before you go through those cold, automatic, barred doors, you know your life is not your own. This is especially true during the first week, while you stare at florescent lighting and wait impatiently for your meds to kick in. I wish I had remembered the psych ward prison cell a week ago. If I had, maybe I wouldn't be wearing this hospital gown that they gave me until I can get more compliant clothes. — Jacquelyn Nicole Davis

There are movies whose feel-good sentiments and slick craft annoy me so deeply that I know they will become box-office successes or top prizewinners. I call this internal mechanism my Built-In Hit Detector. — Richard Corliss

To invent out of knowledge means to produce inventions that are true. Every man should have a built-in automatic crap detector operating inside him. It also should have a manual drill and a crank handle in case the machine breaks down. If you're going to write, you have to find out what's bad for you. Part of that you learn fast, and then you learn what's good for you. — Ernest Hemingway,

Laura, apparently, is a human bullshit detector. — Jasmine Warga

Now, let's look again at the partial reflection of light by a layer of glass. How does it work? I talked about light reflected from the front surface and the back surface. This idea of surfaces was a simplification I made in order to keep things easy at the beginning. Light is really not affected by surfaces. An incoming photon is scattered by the electrons in the atoms inside the glass, and a new photon comes back up to the detector. It's interesting that instead of adding up all the billions of tiny arrows that represent the amplitude for all the electrons inside the glass to scatter an incoming photon, we can add just two arrows-for the "front surface" and "back surface" reflections-and come out with the same answer. Let's see why. — Richard Feynman

The bottom line is how do we best provide for the security of the traveling public in light of a determined enemy who is adept at constructing well-designed, well-concealed devices which would not show up in a walk-through metal detector? We're trying to employ the best technology to identify any possible threat. — John Pistole

Out of curiosity, would you be willing to take a lie detector test?"
"I'm afraid not," he said. "It goes against my religion."
His brow furrowed. "How?"
"Only God can judge me. I certainly don't trust a machine to do it."
"You only have to worry if you're untruthful. Do you plan to lie?"
"No, I prefer to sit, thank you. — J.M. Darhower

Kevlar wrist cuffs in place, smoke bombs in left cargo pocket, zip ties in the right, and my handy-dandy, military-grade, metal detector-defying, twin APS daggers snug in their sheaths and hidden inside my steel-toe Doc Martens. Nothing like a well-stocked pair of black cargoes to make me feel girly. — Tera Lynn Childs

Part of growing up is developing a bullshit detector, and kids usually do a pretty fair job of wising each other up. — Pauline Kael

And I met Madeline's necromancer. His name's Luca."
"A death detector?" Tod made a face. "That's creepy."
"It gets weirder. He's dating Sophie."
"On purpose? — Rachel Vincent

Bryson says that "we tend to regard other people's languages as we regard their cultures - with ill-hidden disdain." Too true. Unfortunately, Bryson proves himself right with a series of stories that should have set off his own too-bizarre-to-be-true detector. — Robert Lane Greene

Right,' said Kai, 'that'll be no problem in a city of two and a half million people. Let me just go dig out my special Lunar detector, and I'll get right on that. — Marissa Meyer

Philosophy is a proud, sullen detector of the poverty and misery of man. It may turn him from the world with a proud, sturdy contempt; but it cannot come forward and say, here are rest, grace, pardon, peace, strength, and consolation. — Richard Cecil

Beside me, Molly rolled her shoulders in a few jerky motions and pushed at her hair in fitful little gestures. She tugged at her well-tattered skirts, and grimaced at her boots. "Can you see if there's any mud on them?"
I paused to consider her for a second. Then I said, "You have two tattoos showing right now, and you probably used a fake ID to get them. Your piercings would set off any metal detector worth the name, and you're featuring them in parts of your anatomy your parents wish you didn't yet realize you had. You're dressed like Frankenhooker, and your hair has been dyed colors I previously thought existed only in cotton candy." I turned to face the door again. "I wouldn't waste time worrying about a little mud on the boots. — Jim Butcher

On a regular basis, to appease White House or campaign staffs, Secret Service officials order agents to ignore basic security rules and let people into events without being put through a magnetometer or metal detector. — Ronald Kessler

didn't talk soothingly to the rat, or stroke her, but firmly grabbed her behind the neck, mimicking a playful nip, and then ran his fingers up and down her rib cage, tickling her. She squirmed briefly, but stopped when he turned her over and tickled her belly. (Like humans, rats have "tickle-skin.") That was when she began to laugh, calls that we heard through the bat detector as quick, high-pitched chirps, and saw on the computer monitor in a sonogram rendition as a vertical series of wavy lines. Compared to a sonogram of various kinds of human laughs, a rat's chirps may be closest to a giggle. "There, she's laughing already," Panksepp said, tickling her some more. "Chup, chup, chup," I wrote in my notebook, trying to approximate the bat-detector's translation of her rat laughter. When Panksepp stopped tickling, she jumped up and bunny-hopped around the bin, while making more of her laughing play-chirps. — Virginia Morell

I carry around such a load of non-specific guilt that every time the metal detector beeps, I always have a wild fear that this trip I absent-mindedly packed a Luger. — Dan Greenburg

The polygrapher is not one's friend even if he or she tries to convince one he or she is on one's side. Outright deception! What the polygrapher frequently does is attempt to plant fear in the 'interviewee' by hyping the accuracy of the polygraph machine. For the love of God the polygraph machine isn't God! The more one's afraid that the skeletons in one's closet would be unearthed; the greater one's physiological reactions would turn out. Enough! — S.A. David

I am standing still," Kelly said. "What, does that thing not work when I'm talking? It gets distracted? It's a metal detector with ADD? — Abigail Roux

The National District Attorney's Association Bulletin reported a revealing study that was conducted on another group of destructive men: child sexual abusers. The researcher asked each man whether he himself had been sexually victimized as a child. A hefty 67 percent of the subjects said yes. However, the researcher then informed the men that he was going to hook them up to a lie-detector test and ask them the same questions again. Affirmative answers suddenly dropped to only 29 percent. In other words, abusers of all varieties tend to realize the mileage they can get out of saying, "I'm abusive because the same thing was done to me." Although — Lundy Bancroft

Sarcasm is a great stupidity detector. — Sabrina Zbasnik

Goose bumps are the tangible evidence of vibrational presence. If you have goose bumps, you know that it must be true. Goose bumps are like Truth Detector Machines. — Kate McGahan

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. — Graham Greene

The closest thing we have to a "crap detector" is a qualified librarian. — Jim Trelease

My grandfather was a police officer. He taught Dad about lie detectors and police interrogation methods, so Dad got this old World War II lie detector and used it on us regularly. He was obsessed with the truth. — Brian Herbert

I added that it was no fun to grow old, but that the compensation for it was that time turned your mental shit-detector into a highly calibrated instrument. — Paul Theroux

If she is given full immunity ... in order to verify that she's telling the truth, which I'm sure she is, I would be happy to submit her to a polygraph examination. Lie detector's not a good word because they can't detect lies. — William H. Ginsburg

What's the detector?" Thomas asked. "It detects stuff," Brenda replied curtly. Thomas wrinkled his face at her. — James Dashner

Now the amygdala is our early warning detector, our danger detector. It sorts and scours through all of the information looking for anything in the environment that might harm us. So given a dozen news stories, we will preferentially look at the negative news. — Peter Diamandis

Gough never pretended to perfection or to sainthood - well, hardly ever. Although when he set off the metal detector at airport security, he would blame his aura. — William Faulkner

A death-bed's a detector of the heart. — Edward Young

Would you be willing to take a lie detector test?"
"I'm afraid not," he said. "It goes against my religion."
His brow furrowed. "How?"
"Only God can judge me ... — J.M. Darhower