Credulity Quotes

When men stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything.

No matter how smart or well-educated you are, you can be deceived.

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

He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity.

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

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

It often happens that, if a lie be believed only for an hour, it has done its work, and there is no further occasion for it.

The study of the errors into which great minds have fallen in the pursuit of truth can never be uninstructive. . . No man is so wise but that he may learn some wisdom from his past errors, either of thought or action, and no society has made such advances as to be capable of no improvement from the retrospect of its past folly and credulity.

There isn't anything so grotesque or so incredible that the average human being can't believe it.

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.

I can believe anything provided it is quite incredible.

How easy is it to make people believe a lie, and hard it is to undo that work again!

Human beings will believe in all kinds of things that aren't true, and that's okay. And TV is a part of that.

You don't want to believe everything you hear.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then, we are up for grabs for the next charlatan (political or religious) who comes rambling along.

Always tell the truth, and people will never believe you.

People are stupid; given proper motivation, almost anyone will believe almost anything. Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true. People’s heads are full of knowledge, facts, and beliefs, and most of it is false, yet they think it all true. People are stupid; they can only rarely tell the difference between a lie and the truth, and yet they are confident they can, and so are all the easier to fool.

Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

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

We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

I have learned that it is just as well to avoid even the appearance of something which you prefer not to have published as a fact! So many things are published as facts in any case which have no foundation in them whatsoever, that I don't suppose it really matters! For fair minded people usually wait until they verify a statement before they believe it, and those who believe it without verification are the ones who want to believe it!

Sometimes you're fooled quickly. You want to be fooled. If you can't trust your first impression you're going to have a harder time than you should.

People are more likely to believe a big lie than a small one.

Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?