Hoax Quotes & Sayings

A vocal minority of scientists so mistrusts the models and the complex fragmentary data, that some claim that global warming is a hoax. They have made public statements accusing other scientists of deliberate fraud in aid of their research funding. Both sides are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences. — Joanne Simpson

The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated. — Arthur Koestler

I said your superstitions were crazy, but I haven't said anything about your beliefs in fate or God or providence or whatever you decide to call it. How can the billions of people on the earth who believe in something all be wrong? How can there be noted scientists and doctors who confess to praying every day if it's a big hoax? How can someone die and just be finished or snuffed out? There has to be more and I fully believe there is. — Whitney Boyd

It's all a big hoax, honey. I never wrote a song in my life. I get one-third of the credit for recording it. It makes me look smarter than I am. I've never even had an idea for a song. Just once, mybe. — Elvis Presley

Controller Borasus sighed with relief. Libraries were not places of danger. It had to be a hoax. — Diana Wynne Jones

One of the most astounding dynamics in human relationships is how the unconscious intuition of our brain's right hemisphere is able to act as radar to find us just the right person to provoke and recreate our childhood attachment relationship ... I've given much thought to the question of why we are designed to be drawn -like a moth to a flame- to the very person who is most likely to resurrect all our childhood anguish. It seems like a cruel hoax to play on two wounded souls. — Charlette Mikulka

In a Bloomberg poll, 88% of respondents said that Wall Street bonuses should either be banned outright or taxed at 50%. Just 7% said they should remain an incentive. To put that 7% figure in perspective, 6% of Americans believe the moon landings were a hoax; 7% believe Elvis lives; 24% believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim; 41% believe in ESP; and 48% believe in creationism. Americans will believe anything, it seems-except the idea that incentivizing bankers at systemically important institutions to take big risks makes any sense at all. — Felix Salmon

I've never written a song in my life. It's all a big hoax. — Elvis Presley

We all have a right to know, and if the government has been suppressing information about other life forms, that's the cruelest hoax of all. — Dwight Schultz

I write for one and only one purpose, to overcome the invincible ignorance of the traduced heart. [ ... ] I wish to speak to and for those who have had enough of the Social Lie, the Economics of Mass Murder, the Sexual Hoax, and the Domestication of Conspicuous Consumption. — Kenneth Rexroth

One day you and I will have to have a little talk about this business called love. I still don't understand what it's all about. My guess is that it's just a gigantic hoax, invented to keep people quiet and diverted. Everyone talks about love: the priests, the advertising posters, the literati, and the politicians, those of them who make love. And in speaking of love and offering it as a panacea for every tragedy, they would and betray and kill both body and soul. — Oriana Fallaci

It seemed that for every evil they defeated, worse took its place, but Vaughn banished the thought that this all might be a cruel game, a hoax played on the ... 'No! I know what true Goodness, true Life, true Love is. Besides, this is too miserable to be a game ... unless demons ... NO! Besides, even if I was some kind of pawn, well, then this game piece would rebel! — Darryl Steven Markowitz

And yes, my plan will continue to reduce the carbon pollution that is heating our planet - because climate change is not a hoax. More droughts and floods and wildfires are not a joke. They're a threat to our children's future. And in this election, you can do something about it. — Barack Obama

No matter how many times the world had attempted to show me how special I was, I had always remained sure that it was all a hoax, that I really wasn't special after all. That I had nothing to offer. — Patrick Carman

Inspiration? - a hoax fabricated by poets for their self-importance. — Jean Anouilh

The truth seems to be that they [teachers of grammar] were victims of a mighty hoax, one of those true belly-rumbling impostures which a workaday world can but seldom afford. — Charlton Laird

The bottom line is that when Senator Inhofe says, 'Global warming is a hoax,' he is just dead wrong, according to the vast majority of climate scientists. — Bernie Sanders

The big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It's all voodoo, nonsense, hokum, a hoax. — Michele Bachmann

Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery"
~ Snarky comment of Clive from "The River Swimmer" (pg 47) — Jim Harrison

The whole world knows that global warming is a left wing manufactured hoax. — Ileana Johnson Paugh

I see them on Facebook through the pictures Dad posts, but it's like they aren't real. It's like they're photoshopped Loch Ness monsters and the University of Whatever is going to prove the hoax by showing me the beam of light in the background is wavy or something. They're real. Sometimes I wish they weren't. And that's horrible, so I stop wishing that. Or at least I try to. — Sara Wolf

Whatever happens, I must be back in Somerset by Dec 1 when Mrs Shirley Williams comes to address a rally of the Social Democratic party in Bridgwater. Suitably enough, this hellish woman has chosen the local Comprehensive School as her venue.
Rotten eggs and cowpats can probably be acquired locally, but stink bombs and more sophisticated devices should be brought with you. Hoax bomb calls and maniacal threatening letters should be addressed to Bridgwater Police Headquarters. Tea and biscuits will be served at halftime. — Auberon Waugh

The exegesis Fat labored on month after month struck me as a Pyrrhic victory if there ever was one
in this case an attempt by a beleaguered mind to make sense out of the inscrutable. Perhaps this is the bottom line to mental illness: incomprehensible events occur; your life becomes a bin for hoax-like fluctuations of what used to be reality. And not only that
as if that weren't enough
but you, like Fat, ponder forever over these fluctuations in an effort to order them into a coherency, when in fact the only sense they make is the sense you impose on them, out of necessity to restore everything into shapes and processes you can recognize. The first thing to depart in mental illness is the familiar. And what takes its place is bad news because not only can you not understand it, you also cannot communicate it to other people. The madman experiences something, but what it is or where it comes from he does not know. — Philip K. Dick

Real liars don't lie about anything," Hanna said. "They just lie. 'About' is a word liars use to justify their lying, to make it seem like a localized problem." "You've made quite a study," Grace said, trying to sound light and wry. "But I still don't know," Hanna said. "And that upsets me. With a liar, you can never know the whole truth, ever. You can't ever be sure that this version is the real version. There is no end, no bottom. Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a hoax. — Rebecca Scherm

In a secular age, an authentic miracle must purport to be a hoax, in order to gain credit in the world. — Angela Carter

You know, the greatest hoax I think that has been around in many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming. You notice they don't call it global warming anymore. It's weather control. — Ron Paul

We do not need a new religion or a new bible. We need a new experience - a new feeling of what it is to be "I." The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing - with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego. — Alan W. Watts

The plea agreement negotiated by Janet Reno's Justice Department with Nora, Gene and Trisha Lum is a hoax. It allows two key players in the campaign finance scandal to plead to lesser offenses and effectively concludes a serious investigation that, if taken to a conclusion, could have seriously affected the Clinton Administration's claim that it committed no illegalities in the campaign finance scandal. Nora Lum was a close confidant of Ron Brown and remains close to John Huang. Trisha Lum, her daughter, worked for Brown at the Commerce Department and worked on trade missions. — Larry Klayman

Almost as remarkable as the hoax itself, and indicative of the enormous cultural power of its perpetrators, is the fact that the revelation of Rigoberta's mendacity has changed almost nothing. The Nobel committee has already refused to take back her prize, many of the thousands of college courses that make her book a required text for American college students will continue to do so, and the editorial writers of the major press institutions have already defended her falsehoods on the same grounds that supporters of Tawana Brawley's parallel hoax made famous: even if she's lying, she's telling the truth. — David Horowitz

It takes the youth, really; they're the ones that should have the energy, it shouldn't be the old geezers, but the signs are very worrying. Half of them, apparently, don't believe in global warming. They think it's a hoax, which is more of that stupid, stick-their-head-in-the-sand attitude. Where is the outrage at the generations that have preceded them spending all the money? But the cynicism is so deep and so ingrained; I guess no one feels they can do anything. — Bill Maher

What if it's all a hoax and we've created a better world for nothing? — Naomi Klein

Michaela wasn't someone Lilia ever trusted, but there was a certain kinship; she shared Lilia's suspicion that the world might prove, in the end, to have been either a mirage or a particularly elaborate hoax. — Emily St. John Mandel

This whole illusion has its history in ways of thinking - in the images, models, myths, and language systems which we have used for thousands of years to make sense of the world. These have had an effect on our perceptions which seems to be strictly hypnotic. It is largely by talking that a hypnotist produces illusions and strange behavioral changes in his subjects - talking coupled with relaxed fixation of the subject's conscious attention. The stage magician, too, performs most of his illusions by patter and misdirection of attention. Hypnotic illusions can be vividly sensuous and real to the subject, even after he has come out of the so-called "hypnotic trance." It is, then, as if the human race had hypnotized or talked itself into the hoax of egocentricity. There is no one to blame but ourselves. — Alan W. Watts

For unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.
There is no point whatever in making plans for a future which you will
never be able to enjoy. When your plans mature, you will still be living
for some other future beyond. You will never, never be able to sit back
with full contentment and say, "Now, I've arrived!" Your entire
education has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing
you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now. — Alan W. Watts

Take Ron Paul. He appeals to a lot of progressives. He said on Fox, 'The greatest hoax I think that has been around for many, many years if not hundreds of years has been this hoax on the environment and global warming.' He doesn't provide any argument or evidence as to why he disregards the scientific consensus
just, I say so, period. With that attitude, you really are approaching the edge. — Noam Chomsky

There's definitely some parallels between me and Joaquin Phoenix, I think. The line gets so blurry. My rap career wasn't a hoax, but it was absolutely intended to be a joke. The problem was that I really was on a quest to somehow be a Caucasian Ol' Dirty Bastard. — Steve-O

People of conscience in our leadership in Washington have been scared off by the right and the fossil fuel lobbies. They won't even use the term "sustainability" or "climate change" in an energy bill, which is ludicrous on its face. It completely ignores the elephant in the room that we're all dealing with. The average American doesn't even believe climate change is real, they think it's all a hoax. — James Cameron

Athletes as role models and heroes is a hoax, a sick hoax. The men and women who are fighting in Iraq, they are the true heroes. — Gale Sayers

Though if love was an animal, Garret knew, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn't exist, that didn't matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it. — Tao Lin

With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it. — James Inhofe

The so-called assault weapons ban is a hoax. It is a political appeal to the ignorant. The guns it supposedly banned have been illegal for 78 years. Did the ban make them 'more' illegal? The ban addresses only the appearance of weapons, not their operation. — David Mamet

The biggest industry hoax is that the United States can't move to renewable energy now. It's a lie. — Mark Ruffalo

In the early 20th century the need to find this missing link became so desperate that an elaborate hoax was created. Piltdown Man ("discovered" in 1912) was believed to be genuine for over 40 years. In fact is was faked using a Medieval human skull, the jaw bone of an orangutan and fossilized teeth from a chimpanzee, and then "aged" by soaking it in acid and staining it with an iron solution. — Ellis Silver

People who mock incidents in history such as 9/11 or the Holocaust, referring to it all as a hoax or stirring up crazy conspiracy theories about it, should really stop and think about their words first, both because it shows flaws in logic and rationality to deny the obvious, and because to play pretend with incidents which killed innocent people, well, that's just like laughing in the face of tragedy. It's as if to say, "no, it's not horrible enough that these people were killed, oh no, we have to drag on these incidents by indulging in melodramatic fantasies!" In essence this means that those who lost loved ones not only have to live with these losses forever, they also have to live with the people who deny that any of it ever happened. It does no good to forget history or to deny it. All it does is desensitize people; it tells them that it's all just a game, which then risks the possibility of nobody taking it seriously enough to prevent something similar from happening again. — Rebecca McNutt

Beauty is not a hoax ... Come on, I say to the creek, surprise me; and it does, with each new drop. Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it (271). — Annie Dillard

Hoax needed to complete the premises of truth. — Toba Beta

I'll tell you now before you can speak: strength is a myth. It's not what it is, when it looks like what it is. It's usually what it is when it looks like something else. It takes bravery to admit that you're petrified and keep soldiering on despite it. Oh,and, "easy"? Also a hoax! If it existed it would be sold for the same as you got it for- nothing! Ha! — Mary-Louise Parker

While all men are born as equals, to say that Brahmins alone are the highest and all others are low as Pariah (the Untouchables ) or Panchama is sheer nonsense. It is roguish to say so. It is a big hoax played on us — Periyar E.V. Ramasamy

Here is what they got out of their hoax. Their friends and families scorned them. Their social standing, possessions, and political privileges were stolen from them by both Jews and Romans. They were persecuted, imprisoned, whipped, tortured, exiled, crucified, eaten by lions, and cut to pieces by gladiators. So some silly Jews invented the whole elaborate, incredible lie of Christianity for absolutely no reason, and millions of Gentiles believed it, devoted their lives to it, and died for it - for no reason. It was only a fantastic practical joke, a hoax. — Peter Kreeft

The dismaying truth is that birtherism is part of a larger pattern of rejection of reality that has taken hold of intimidating segments of one of the two political parties that alternate in power in our governing institutions. It is akin to the view that global warming is a hoax, or that the budget can be balanced through spending cuts alone, or that contraception causes abortion, or that evolution is just another theory, on a par with the theory that the earth is six thousand years old. — Hendrik Hertzberg

Science Class

Would you invent some irrational explanation for we lost souls that the glaciers aren't really melting at all, that they are and will remain just as they always have been? Some rationale that claims the whole climate change scenario is really just a satanic plot, concocted by liberal secular humanists to trick the world into thinking that the glaciers have been melting for twice as long as the Bible says the Earth has been around. — Diogenes Of Mayberry

In 1932, lame duck president Herbert Hoover was so desperate to remain in the White House that he dressed up as Eleanor Roosevelt. When FDR discovered the hoax in 1936, the two men decided to stay together for the sake of the children. — Johnny Carson

I think that object orientedness is almost as much of a hoax as artificial intelligence. — Alexander Stepanov

Most poetry just confounds me. I really want to like it, but I can't help thinking it's a hoax. (p. 24) — Stephan Pastis

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals — Henry Miller

Much that was called religion has carried an unconscious attitude of hostility toward life. True religion must teach that life is filled with joys pleasing to the eye of God, that knowledge without action is empty. All men must see that the teaching of religion by rules and rote is largely a hoax. The proper teaching is recognized with ease. You can know it without fail because it awakens within you that sensation which tells you this is something you've always known. — Frank Herbert

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax. — Pablo Picasso

Woe to any climate denier who called climate change a hoax when she was nearby. — Donald G. Firesmith

As is so often the case with pieces that appear in the Onion, I honestly could not decide whether this was a clever hoax or not - the arguments were almost exactly as stupid as the real thing. — Christopher Hitchens

All great shows, she told me when I was little (and still learning to flex the tiny muscles in my esophagus), depend on the most ordinary objects. We can be a weary, cynical lot - we grow old and see only what suits us, and what is marvelous can often pass us by. A kitchen knife. A bulb of glass. A human body. That something so common should be so surprising - why, we forget it. We take it for granted. We assume that our sight is reliable, that our deeds are straightforward, that our words have one meaning. But life is uncommon and strange; it is full of intricacies and odd, confounding turns. So onstage we remind them just how extraordinary the ordinary can be. This, she said, is the tiger in the grass. It's the wonder that hides in plain sight, the secret life that flourishes just beyond the screen. For you are not showing them a hoax or a trick, just a new way of seeing what's already in front of them. This, she told me, is your mark on the world. This is the story that you tell. — Leslie Parry

Google and others truncate headlines at 70 characters. On the Manti Teo story, Deadspin's scoop fell down the Google search results, overtaken by copycat stories with simpler headlines. Deadspin's headline was 118 characters. Vital information - 'hoax' - was one of the words that was cut off. — Nick Denton

An Idea is nothing but Information, It won't do us any harm until we accept it as perception of truth in our mind, which in time will potentially evolve and construct major events in history. — Djayawarman Alamprabu

The lies (Western slander) which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man (Muhammad) are disgraceful to ourselves only. — Thomas Carlyle

I'm here Corinne. I'm here waiting for you to realize that helping you, listening to you, sitting in silence with you, holding you while you cry, kissing you until you can't think straight - I'm honored to be the one who does those things for you. I'm privileged to hear the words 'I love you' from your mouth and have them directed at me. But if you don't need me, then you don't need me. So this is me telling you that if you find that you do need me, want me, whatever, it's your turn. Come find me. I love you. And not just today or tomorrow - I will love you always. — Lila Felix

There are some things I don't like, about which I think, well, that's me. But coriander is a giant hoax perpetrated by a perverted society. — Stephen Fry

Sound quality was supposed to be one of the big selling points for CDs but, as we know, it wasn't very good at all. It was just another con, a get-rich-quick scheme, a monumental hoax perpetrated on the music consuming public. — John Mellencamp

I'm a hoax, a dying boy who's grown wings. — Maria Dahvana Headley

When one gets reports from scientists, engineers and technicians whose credibility by all common standards is high and whose moral caliber seems to preclude a hoax, one can do no less than hear them out, in all seriousness. — J. Allen Hynek

President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. — Clint Eastwood

Chemotherapy and radiotherapy will make the ancient method of drilling holes in a patient's head to permit the escape of demons look relatively advanced ... Toxic chemotherapy is a hoax. The doctors who use it are guilty of pre-meditated murder, and the use of cobalt and other methods of cancer treatment popular today effectively closes the door on cure. — Ernst T. Krebs

I actually really don't want to know," I admitted. "Up until a few seconds ago I had a lot of illusions about you being this incredible, sane guy and I'd like to keep them, but I'm not going to be satisfied until I do."
"Fine then, I won't tell you."
I planted my face in my palm and sighed. "It doesn't matter how crazy this is, I'm going to be thinking about it all night."
He gave me a purely demonic grin. "Then I definitely won't tell you. "
My eyes narrowed. "That's nothing to be proud of."
"And why wouldn't I be proud of keeping a pretty girl up all night?" He chuckled and chewed on a French fry.
My face and the back of my neck burned. He had to be joking. No one could say something so horrifying and then eat a French fry. Supernatural beings didn't like fast food, I was sure of it. This was all an elaborate hoax and I just hasn't picked up on it yet. It had to be, and even if it wasn't I would pretend it was. Pretend until it became true. — Katherine Pine

I mean a global warming advocate is as wrong as anybody could be about anything, folks. It's a hoax. There is no man-made global warming. It has been thoroughly debunked. The fact that it's a hoax has been proven, by them. E-mails that were uncovered at East Anglia University in Great Britain show that they worked together to perpetuate the hoax, that they lied about data, that they eliminate data that contradicted their political belief. So you'd have to assume from that that they are political advocates disguised as scientists who are purposely engaging in misinformation. — Rush Limbaugh

Wouldn't thinking have put over on us the biggest hoax yet? — Friedrich Nietzsche

A person who believes that Elvis is still alive is very unlikely to get promoted to a position of great power and responsibility in our society. Neither will a person who believes that the holocaust was a hoax. But people who believe equally irrational things about God and the bible are now running our country. This is genuinely terrifying. — Sam Harris

I just wish this social institution [religion] wasn't based on what appears to me to be a monumental hoax built on an accumulation of customs and myths directed toward proving something that isn't true. — Andy Rooney

Reasonable readers would have accepted my book about ghouls as a work of fiction, but such readers are rare, and most condemned it as a hoax. Even worse, totally unreasonable readers took it for a scientific treatise. — H.P. Lovecraft

If abnormal weather happens every year, it's not very abnormal, is it? — Ken Akamatsu

Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible. — Lord Kelvin

Global Warming: It is a hoax. It is bad science. It is high-jacking public policy. It is the greatest scam in history. — John Coleman

In a famous hoax, physicist Alan Sokal submitted an article to a leading journal of cultural studies purporting to describe how quantum gravity could produce a "liberatory postmodern science." The article, which parodied the convoluted style of argument in the fashionable academic world of cultural studies, was promptly published by the editors. Sokal announced that his intention was to test the intellectual standards of the discipline by checking whether the journal would publish a piece "liberally salted with nonsense." Sokal, "A Physicist Experiments with Cultural Studies," April 15, 1996, — Dani Rodrik

Most meteorological research is funded by the federal government. And boy, if you want to get federal funding, you better not come out and say human-induced global warming is a hoax because you stand the chance of not getting funded. — William M. Gray

My hole is warm and full of light. Yes, full of light. I doubt if there is a brighter spot in all New York than this hole of mine, and I do not exclude Broadway. Or the Empire State Building on a photographer's dream night. But that is taking advantage of you. Those two spots are among the darkest of our whole civilization ... which might sound like a hoax, or a contradiction, but that (by contradiction, I mean) is how the world moves: Not like an arrow, but a boomerang. — Ralph Ellison

Krista asks,"What is it about society that disappoints you so much?"

Elliot thinks, "Oh I don't know, is it that we collectively thought Steve Jobs was a great man even when we knew he made billions off the backs of children?

Or maybe it's that it feels like all our heroes are counterfeit; the world itself's just one big hoax. Spamming each other with our burning commentary of bullshit masquerading as insight, our social media faking as intimacy.

Or is it that we voted for this? Not with our rigged elections, but with our things, our property, our money.
I'm not saying anything new. We all know why we do this, not because Hunger Games books makes us happy but because we wanna be sedated. Because it's painful not to pretend, because we're cowards.

Fuck Society."

"Mr. Robot" season 1 episode 1, 'ohellofriend.mov — Sam Esmail

Vidal gives the impression of believing that the entire heterosexual edifice - registry offices, 'Romeo and Juliet,' the disposable diaper - is just a sorry story of self-hypnosis and mass hysteria: a hoax, a racket, or sheer propaganda. — Martin Amis

I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax. — Charles Bukowski

Congress right now is dismantling legislation instituted by Richard Nixon - really the last liberal president of the U.S., literally, and that shows you what's been going on. They're dismantling the limited measures of the Nixon administration to try to do something about what is a growing, emerging catastrophe. And this is connected with a huge propaganda system, proudly and openly declared by the business world, to try to convince people that climate change is just a liberal hoax. "Why pay attention to these scientists?" And we're really regressing back to the medieval period. It's not a joke. — Noam Chomsky