Charles Maurice de Talleyrand Quotes

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

The primitive simplicity of their [the masses'] minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies but would be ashamed to tell big ones.

It is easier to mislead many men than one.

People do not believe lies because they have to, but because they want to.

The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.

The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are intentionally bad.

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.

All you have to do is anesthetize the masses by telling them they’re an elite, that they’ve got a mission, that they’re making history, that they’re fulfilling their destiny and fighting for a better world — and they swallow it like lambs — even when a guttersnipe says it.

The public buys its opinions as it buys its meat or takes in its milk, on the principle that it is cheaper to do this than to keep a cow. So it is, but the milk is more likely to be watered.

The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than a small one. The greater the lie, the greater chance that it will be believed. All epoch-making events have been produced not by the written, but the spoken word.

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.

The oblique paradox of propaganda is that the lie in the throat becomes, by repetition, the truth in the heart.

If you keep saying two plus two equals five over and over again, then that is what people are going to think. Maybe it does equal five if we keep changing the definition of what's normal and what's right and what's wrong.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

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.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

Foolish many said; foolish many, many believed.

Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.

Among the calamities of war, may he justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

People are dumb, People are dumb, Promise ‘em peace and kingdom come. / People are dopes, People are dopes, Play on their peeves, play on their hopes. / Make ‘em feel mad, Make ‘em feel mad, Everything’s lousy, everything’s bad. / Make ‘em afraid, Make ‘em afraid, Show ‘em they’re dupes, tricked and betrayed. / Then if they bite, Then if they bite, You will have fools to fight your fight.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion and opinion brings on substance.

You can fool some of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time. That’s usually enough.

Of all newspaper presses, I never heard anyone deny that the American is the worst.... [N]othing is easier than to make the people know only one side of a question; few things are easier than to keep them altogether from the knowledge of any particular affair; and, worse than all, on them [the American people] may easily be practiced the discovery that lies may work their intended effect, before the truth can overtake them. It is hard to tell which is worse; the wide diffusion of things that are not true or the suppression of things that are.