A Quote by Sophie Swetchine

Suspicion has its dupes, as well as credulity.

Sophie Swetchine

Quote Topics

Credulity Dupes Suspicion Well

Quote Author

Sophie Swetchine
Russian - Author
1782 - 1857

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.

Edmund Burke

We must remember how apt man is to extremes--rushing from credulity and weakness to suspicion and distrust.

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

Bertrand Russell

There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind.

Joseph Conrad

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Bertrand Russell

In childhood our credulity serves us well. It helps us to pack, with extraordinary rapidity, our skulls full of the wisdom of our parents and our ancestors. But if we don't grow out of it in the fullness of time, our ... nature makes us a sitting target for astrologers, mediums, gurus, evangelists, and quacks. We need to replace the automatic credulity of childhood with the constructive skepticism of adult science.

Richard Dawkins

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

Henry David Thoreau

There's a suspicion always about politicians. The suspicion level is really elevated and it just feels like people do not trust their institutions.

Christopher Michael Cillizza

Old heads as well as young may sometimes be charged with ignorance and presumption. The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.

John F. Kennedy

A person who searched rooms, brandished pistols, dangled promises of half a million franc fees for nameless services and then wrote instructions to Polish spies might reasonably be regarded with suspicion. But suspicion of what?

Eric Ambler

Surmise is the gossamer that malice blows on fair reputations, the corroding dew that destroys the choice blossom. Surmise is primarily the squint of suspicion, and suspicion is established before it is confirmed.