People Are Gullible Quotes & Sayings

When we are tired or preoccupied - what psychologists call 'resource-depleted' - we start to economise, to conserve those resources. Higher-order thinking is more expensive. So too is doubt, scepticism, arugment. 'Resource depletion specifically disables cognitive elaboration,' wrote Harvard psychologist Daniel Gillbert ... Because it takes less brain power to believe than to doublt, we are, when tired or distracted, gullible. Because we are all biased, and biases are quick and effortless, exhaustion tends to make us prefer the information we know and are comfortable with. We are too tired to do the heavier lifting of examining new or contradictory information, so we fall back on our biases the opinions and the people we already trust — Margaret Heffernan

The commies are the only people on earth who think Star Wars will work. If they're that gullible, maybe we should have held the summit at Atlantic City and let them lose all their missiles playing Keno. — P. J. O'Rourke

Gossip is a plague that consumes weak, gullible people and blinds them from the truth of reality; it can devour entire city's. I prefer keeping my eyes wide open. — David Spade

If you are inherently a good guy, which I think I am, you instinctively want to help people even before you know what their problem may be. Which, as I examine that notion, makes good guys sound gullible. Con artists look for good guys because of that built-in gullibility. If they're con artists that come in a sexually alluring package, a good guy can become a brainless idiot. Allow me to introduce myself. — Dan Skinner

I'm gullible. I think people mean what they say. — Colin Trevorrow

There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them. — Michael Moore

You'd be surprised what people will accept once you insist two or three times running that they have seen what you tell them they have seen. — Andrew Levkoff

Many people are gullible, and we can expect this to continue. — P.T. Barnum

That was the year the British decided to get out and sell everything. So I immediately held an election. I knew the people will be dead scared. And I won my bet big-time. The gullible fools! — Lee Kuan Yew

People who work out are so gullible. They think they'll live longer. Well, good luck to them. It's a shame most of them aren't bright enough to realise that the extra time added to their life when they're eighty and too old to do anything productive with it is roughly equal to all the time wasted in the gym when they're young and capable of having fun. — Toni Jordan

Violence is fomented by the imposition of singular and belligerent identities on gullible people, championed by proficient artisans of terror. — Amartya Sen

Now there is a book coming out that says Christ was really a woman who was a lesbian in a relationship with Mary Magdalene."
Jill started laughing . . . "Come on, people aren't that gullible."
"Right," Allison said. "All you've got to do is tell them it's 'secret' or 'forbidden' or 'hidden' knowledge, then get a movie star to peddle it, and they'll believe anything. — Joseph Max Lewis

A lot of people pretend to be. They wear robes and put on airs to take advantage of the ignorant and gullible. But — Patrick Rothfuss

Some people say that taxes are the price we pay for civilization. But the runaway taxes of our time are the price we pay for being gullible. — Thomas Sowell

It's a mistake to lie to a librarian, you know. Some people assume we're shy and gullible, but we know how to dig up the dirt. — Virginia Lowell

The young people who join extremist groups are clearly suffering from massive deficiencies in religious knowledge and are often politically gullible (when they are not attempting to salve pangs of conscience by cutting themselves off from a life of delinquency). — Tariq Ramadan

THE MISCONCEPTION: You believe your opinions and decisions are based on experience and facts, while those who disagree with you are falling for the lies and propaganda of sources you don't trust. THE TRUTH: Everyone believes the people they disagree with are gullible, and everyone thinks they are far less susceptible to persuasion than they truly are. — David McRaney

When you say "bank," a bank is a building, a set of computers and chairs and things. The bankers are the people running these banks. They're the chief officers, and they push the loans because they don't care if they go bad. For one thing, they may package these bad loans and sell them off to gullible institutional investors. — Michael Hudson

to leaders - people are emotional and you can take them for a ride as long as they continue to be gullible — Anno Nomius

Facebook this week announced that it's experimenting with a tag that will mark sites such as the Onion, Clickhole and Empire News as satire and, hopefully, alert the millions of gullible people who share information from these sites as truth each week. — Anonymous

Many people are partial to the notion that ... all writers are somehow mere vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose. That we are not really in control. This is a variation on that twee little fable that writers like to pass off on gullible readers, that a character can develop a will of his own and 'take over a book.' This makes writing sound supernatural and mysterious, like possession by faeries. The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target. A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen. — Paul Collins

The International Brigade was not formed to protect freedom and democracy. It was founded as a tool of of the Comintern, to promote the interests of the Soviet Union - and thereby of Joseph Stalin, the butcher of millions. It made political sense for the International Brigade to recruit non-communists - useful fools was what Lenin had called such people in an earlier manipulation of gullible decency - but of course most were then vetted by the NKVD, the Soviet Union's secret police. — Kevin Myers

Always remember that as long as other people are gullible, there's no limit to what you can achieve. — Scott Adams

Shelby is so gullible; she believes every word I say to her, as if it is so easy just to believe the best in people. — Jillian Cantor

When people are kids their parents teach them all sorts of stuff, some of it true and useful, some of it absurd hogwash (example of former: don't crap your pants; example of latter: Columbus discovered America). This is why puberty happens. The purpose of puberty is to shoot an innocent and gullible child full of nasty glandular secretions that manifest in the mind as confusion, in the innards as horniness, upon the skin as pimples, and on the tongue as cocksure venomous disbelief in every piece of information, true or false, gleaned from one's parents since infancy. The net result is a few years of familial hell culminating in the child's exodus from the parental nest, sooner or later followed by a peace treaty and the emergence of the postpubescent as an autonomous, free-thinking human being who knows that Columbus only trespassed on an island inhabited by our lost and distant Indian relatives, but who also knows not to crap his pants. — David James Duncan

I wrote a "holy book" as a fun way to test if I could and see if people could believe in it, before long people told me they were seeing visions of the gods and afterlife I had described. People had really strong faith in the scriptures I had written. Of course I insisted they were inspired. And they believed it. You can't imagine how gullible people can be — Bangambiki Habyarimana

People, and not only Americans, are losing their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers for no other reason than the profits of US armaments corporations, and the gullible American people seem proud of it. Those ribbon decals on their cars, SUVs and monster trucks proclaim their naive loyalty to the armaments industries and to the whores in Washington who promote wars. — Paul Craig Roberts

Fame is proof that the people are gullible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Could people be trained to be less gullible? Or are you as stuck with gullibility as you are with skin colour? — Keith Henson

The only thing that can be expected from the next US president is more war, more murder, and more oppression of the gullible American people. People as uninformed and as gullible as Americans have no future. Americans are a dead people that history is about to run over. — Paul Craig Roberts

The Palestinians were deliberately forced into refugee camps by their fellow Muslims and not permitted to integrate in any way into the society of their unwilling hosts. Their own people didn't even try to help them; instead they prevailed upon the United Nations and gullible Western charities to supply the refugees' needs. They have been kept in these camps for more than sixty years - like an unhealed wound by their own people - just to be used as political pawns by Muslim negotiators to charge their plight as "Israeli aggression. — Hal Lindsey

Trust me, Wilbur. People are very gullible. They'll believe anything they see in print. — E.B. White

The moment workers can afford too little they rebel. The last time this was a real danger was 1950. Communists took advantage of supply problems and stirred up gullible people against their very own country. — Elfriede Jelinek

[H]e was one of those people who got to the top of an organisation through luck, connections, the indulgence of superiors and that sort of carelessness towards others that the easily impressed termed ruthlessness and those of a less gullible nature called sociopathy. But sometimes, just through his sheer unthinking brusqueness and inability to think through the consequences of a remark, he said what everybody else was only thinking. A comic poet working in obscene doggerel. — Iain M. Banks

Fame is proof that people are gullible. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

It doesn't work the same way everywhere. The Americans are the most gullible, because they don't like to deny co-workers' requests. People in the former Soviet bloc countries are less trusting, perhaps because of their previous experiences with their countries' secret services. — Kevin Mitnick

They do think the world is some kind of science-fiction novel, then. Do you realize how fervently most people will believe in the promises of technology, even when those promises fly in the face of common sense? — Dexter Palmer

People with a psychological need to believe in marvels are no more prejudiced and gullible than people with a psychological need not to believe in marvels. — Charles Fort

Unfortunately, as much as I am gullible, I also hate lying. I tend to tell the truth a lot ... lying just isn't worth it. But I think I'm guilty of telling people that I'm 5 minutes away when really I'm about 45 or an hour away. — Monica Raymund

Imagine, with John Lennon, a world with no religion. Imagine no suicide bombers, no 9/11, no 7/7, no Crusades, no witch-hunts, no Gunpowder Plot, no Indian partition, no Israeli/Palestinian wars, no Serb/Croat/Muslim massacres, no persecution of Jews as 'Christ-killers', no Northern Ireland 'troubles', no 'honour killings', no shiny-suited bouffant-haired televangelists fleecing gullible people of their money ('God wants you to give till it hurts'). Imagine no Taliban to blow up ancient statues, no public beheadings of blasphemers, no flogging of female skin for the crime of showing an inch of it. — Richard Dawkins

I think people are more apt to believe photographs, especially if it's something fantastic. They're willing to be more gullible. Sometimes they want fantasy. — Cindy Sherman

Massage therapists, and others in the holistic arts ... seem to be a particularly gullible bunch. And there are a lot of people who have seized upon that, and marketed their products, their classes, their modalities, and their wild claims to us ... and many of us have fallen for it, hook, line and sinker ... and unfortunately, gone on to convince our clients to buy into it, as well ... Our profession has turned into the snake oil medicine show. — Laura Allen

We want to believe that we're invulnerable, and that people who get tricked deserve it. Well, they don't. And someday the arrogant types who mock the gullible are likely to get their turn to wear the dunce cap. — Walter Kirn

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The whole entire existence of the pharmaceutical industry is based on presentation of false science, and advertising this false science and drumming it into the minds of gullible people who have no curiosity to find out why that is so. — Fereydoon Batmanghelidj