Dupes Quotes & Sayings

No one cares for reality, everyone stakes his essence on illusion. Slaves and dupes of their self-love, men live not in order to live but to make other believe they have lived! — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep ... — Jane Addams

Evil always wins through the strength of its splendid dupes; and there has in all ages been a disastrous alliance between abnormal innocence and abnormal sin. — G.K. Chesterton

True love is mixed up with birdlike squabbles, in which the disputants wound each other to the quick; but a quarrel without animus is, on the contrary, apiece of flattery to the dupe's conceit. — Honore De Balzac

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself. — John Calvin

What the fuck was that? Is it like that vid, with the people and the pods and the dupes?"
"Oh, that's a scary one. It's sort of like that. He's in love."
"What with?"
"Who," Peabody said with a laugh. "Apparently he met somebody a few weeks ago, and he's in love. He's happy."
"He's fucking creepy, that's what he is. I think I like him better when he's a dick. He kept smiling."
"Happy makes you smile."
"It's unnatural. — J.D. Robb

Despoilers obey the Malthusian law; they multiply with the means of existence, and the means of existence of knaves is the credulity of their dupes. — Frederic Bastiat

We are built to be dupes for theories. But theories come and go; experience stays. Explanations — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

War is the gambling table of governments, and citizens the dupes of the game. — Thomas Paine

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests. — George Washington

There is no man so great as not to have some littleness more predominant than all his greatness. Our virtues are the dupes, and often only the plaything of our follies. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest with Greek he over-run ye, Procure the book for love or money, Translated from Boileau's translation, And quote quotation on quotation. — Jonathan Swift

Those who commit acts of violence are surely responsible for them; they are not dupes or mechanisms of an impersonal social force, but agents with responsibility. On the other hand, these individuals are formed, and we would be making a mistake if we reduced their actions to purely self-generated acts of will or symptoms of individual pathology of 'evil'. — Judith Butler

The most mistrustful are often the greatest dupes. — Jean Francois Paul De Gondi

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues. — Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

But alas, my dear child, we are the slaves of custom, the dupes of prejudice, and dare not stem the torrent of the opposing world, even though our judgments condemn our compliance! However, since the die is cast, we must endeavor to make the best of it. — Fanny Burney

The concept of marketing is almost as old as humanity itself ... suffice it to say here that it took almost no time for a wily serpent to sell Adam and Eve on a shiny apple from the Tree of Knowledge, at which point they became not only the first humans but also the first marketing demographic, and God expelled them from the Garden of Eden for being total consumerist dupes. (p. 40) — BikeSnobNYC

The evils we experience flow from the excess of democracy. The people do not want virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots. — Elbridge Gerry

Turning, then, from this loathsome combination of church and state, and weeping over the follies of our fellow men, who yield themselves the willing dupes and drudges of these mountebanks, I consider reformation and redress as desperate, and abandon them to the Quixotism of more enthusiastic minds. — Thomas Jefferson

Men are such dupes by choice, that he who would impose upon others never need be at a loss to find ready victims. — Honore De Balzac

Most people in this country believe that the American Communist Party and its dupes are the chief internal enemy of our economic system and our form of government. This is a serious mistake. — John T. Flynn

There is much to be said for the cynical liberal response. Much of it is true. Yet it has major flaws and is far from the whole story. First, it is a demonization of conservatives. It assumes that they are either rich, evil, self-serving power-mongers, or their paid agents, or dupes. The conservative ranks may well contain some of each. Yet most conservatives are not rich and see themselves as working for the benefit of the country rather than for their own benefit. There are too many idealistic conservatives of good intentions and moderate means for the demonization theory to be true. Second, — George Lakoff

THE ROOT OF RELIGION The idea of literal truth crept into religion relatively late: it is the invention of lawyers, priests and cheese-mongers. The idea of mystery long preceded it, and at the heart of that idea of mystery was an idea of beauty - that is, an idea that this or that view of the celestial and infernal process presented a satisfying picture of form, rhythm and organization. Once this view was adopted as satisfying, its professional interpreters and their dupes sought to reinforce it by declaring it true. The same flow of reasoning is familiar on lower planes. The average man does not get pleasure out of an idea because he thinks it is true; he thinks it is true because he gets pleasure out of it.[Pg — Henry Louis Mencken

I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy. — Daniel Webster

People are dupes, and wicked too. That is what makes it interesting to get them better. — T.H. White

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity. — Sophie Swetchine

If Satan ever laughs, it must be at hypocrites; they are the greatest dupes he has; they serve him better than any others, and receive no wages. — Charles Caleb Colton

The surest way of making a dupe is to let your victim suppose you are his. — Bill Vaughan

How fondly swindlers coddle their dupes! No mother is as caressing or thoughtful towards her adored child as a merchant in hypocrisy toward his milch-cow. — Honore De Balzac

Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists. — Ethan A. Hitchcock

Men would not live in society long if they were not each others dupes. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. — Edmund Burke

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars. — Arthur Hugh Clough

Freud introduced the unconscious, which in effect dethroned man as the uncontested master of his own rational faculties. Instead , our lives and our decisions, our loves and our hates, are more often the result of forces working elsewhere than in our conscious mind, and we are the dupes of those forces, rather than their master. (...) Indeed, thinking, as Descartes conceived it, accounts for considerably less than half the story of our being in the world. — Paul C. Vitz

You will laugh when you discover that I often had no scruples about deceiving nitwits and scoundrels and fools when I found it necessary. As for women, this sort of reciprocal deceit cancels itself out, for when love enters in, both parties are usually dupes — Giacomo Casanova

We swim, day by day, on a river of delusions, and are effectually amused with houses and towns in the air, of which the men aboutus are dupes. But life is a sincerity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe with. — Ambrose Bierce

Dishonesty is the raw material not of quacks only, but also in great part dupes. — Thomas Carlyle

When the spirit is not master of the world, then it is its dupe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Knowledge is power. Unfortunate dupes of this saying will keep on creating, ambitiously, till they have stunned their native initiative and made their thoughts weak. — Clarence Day

Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter. — Mason Cooley

Ratings agencies are highly conflicted, unimaginative dupes. They are blissfully unaware of adverse selection and moral hazard. Investors should never trust them. — Seth Klarman

It is admirable to die the victim of one's faith; it is sad to die the dupe of one's ambition. — Alphonse De Lamartine

A man's own vanity is a swindler that never lacks for a dupe. — Honore De Balzac

That public men publish falsehoods
Is nothing new. That America must accept
Like the historical republics corruption and empire
Has been known for years.

Be angry at the sun for setting
If these things anger you. Watch the wheel slope and tum.
They are all bound on the wheel, these people, those warriors,
This republic, Europe, Asia.

Observe them gesticulating,
Observe them going down. The gang serves lies, the passionate
Man plays his part; the cold passion for truth
Hunts in no pack.

You are not CatulIus, you know,
To lampoon these crude sketches of Caesar. You are far
From Dante's feet, but even farther from his dirty
Political hatredS.

Let boys want pleasure, and men
Struggle for power, and women perhaps for fame,
And the servile to serve a Leader and the dupes to be duped.
Yours is not theirs. — Robinson Jeffers

Men are so simple, and governed so absolutely by their present needs, that he who wishes to deceive will never fail in finding willing dupes. — Niccolo Machiavelli

the decisive proof that the people are dupes is when the priest is rich and powerful. — Frederic Bastiat

There are science teachers who actually claim that they teach "a healthy skepticism." They do not. They teach a profound gullibility, and their dupes, trained not to think for themselves, will swallow any egregious rot, provided it is dressed up with long words and an affectation of objectivity to make it sound scientific. — Anthony Standen

That a man lives is because he is straight. That a man who dupes others survives is because he has been fortunate enough to be spared. — Confucius

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness. — Washington Irving

One dupe is as impossible as one twin. — John Sterling

Rogueries, absurdities and untruths were perpetrated upon the teachings of Jesus by a large band of dupes and importers led by Paul, the first great corrupter of the teaching of Jesus. — Thomas Jefferson

I expect we shall be told, that the Militia of the country is its natural bulwark, and would be at all times equal to the national defence ... The facts, which from our own experience forbid a reliance of this kind, are too recent to permit us to be the dupes of such a suggestion. — Alexander Hamilton

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors. — Ambrose Bierce

Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness. — Honore De Balzac

People would not long remain in social life if they were not the dupes of each other. — Francois De La Rochefoucauld

When merciless ambition, or mad zeal, has led two hosts of dupes to battlefield, That, blind, they there may dig each other's graves, And call the sad work glory ... — Percy Bysshe Shelley

He had long observed with disapprobation and contempt the superstition which governed Madrid's inhabitants. His good sense had pointed out to him the artifices of the monks, and the gross absurdity of their miracles, wonders, and suppositious relics. He blushed to see his countrymen, the dupes of deceptions, so ridiculous, and only wished for an opportunity to free them from their monkish fetters. That opportunity, so long desired in vain, was at length presented to him. He resolved not to let it slip, but to set before the people, in glaring colours, how enormous were the abuses but too frequently practised in monasteries, and how unjustly public esteem was bestowed indiscriminately upon all who wore a religious habit. He longed for the moment destined to unmask the hypocrites, and convince his countrymen, that a sanctified exterior does not always hide a virtuous heart. — Matthew Gregory Lewis

The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the
genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who
conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is
pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth,"
and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. — Vladimir Nabokov

You think him to be your dupe; if he feigns to be so who is the greater dupe, he or you? — Jean De La Bruyere

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes. — Thomas Jefferson

America's universities are filled with economically ignorant haters of the free market, so university campuses have become major forums for union denunciations of such companies as Nike, Wal-mart, and others. Faculty and students claim to be concerned about 'social justice,' but they are simply being used as dupes by unions who are not at all concerned with justice of any sort. Rather, their main concern is increasing the coffers of union treasuries by driving non-union competitors from the market. — Thomas DiLorenzo

Every man is his own greatest dupe. — William Rounseville Alger

We only make a dupe of the friend whose advice we ask, for we never tell him all; and it is usually what we have left unsaid that decides our conduct. — Diane De Poitiers

There is no nation on earth powerful enough to accomplish our overthrow. Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence.
I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. — Daniel Webster

But have them tell us that every person needs to be with another person in order to be happy, and we nod along like it's the most obvious thing in the world. But there's no reason for it, is there? It's not a proven truth. It's just some thing that our culture has come to spin itself around, mostly so we'll procreate, and we're the dupes who fall for it over and over and over again. — David Levithan

We begin as dupes and end as scoundrels. — Antoinette Du Ligier De La Garde Deshoulieres

It is necessary that the prince should know how to color his nature well, and how to be a hypocrite and dissembler. For men are so simple, and yield so much to immediate necessity, that the deceiver will never lack dupes. — Niccolo Machiavelli

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies. — Jeffrey Kluger

Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy and the dogs that talk revolution, drunk with talk, liars and believers. I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies, said the gamey black-maned wild boar tusking the turf on Mal Paso Mountain. — Robinson Jeffers

Ignorance is an evil weed, which dictators may cultivate among their dupes, but which no democracy can afford among its citizens. — William Beveridge

Education must have two foundations
morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists. — Nicolas Chamfort

Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons — George Bernard Shaw