Dupes In A Way Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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