Top 81 Devious Quotes & Sayings

What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...

The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid. The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.

Churchill was the canny political animal, very devious, bursting with energy and determination, learning as hard as he could.

I'm buying things for people I don't even know. I'm like Willy Wonka, but more manipulative. Imagine if Willy Wonka had a devious goal.

Audiences always love the baddies. Especially these ones that are so witty and charming and outrageously devious - everything you're not supposed to be. I think it speaks to the basic, primal nature in us.

How could you deal with a creature as devious as woman.

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuver. What is difficult about maneuver is to make the devious route the most direct and to turn misfortune to advantage.

Luke Jermay is as devious as he's clever, and he's a Master at complication - with this take on TTTCBE he might just fool the Devil.

What you hold in your hand is proof of man's power - against which our strength means nothing. It has the force of 100 spears. I warn you, man's ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with their cruelty. No creature is as devious or violent.

In India nearly everybody spoke metaphorically except the English who spoke bluntly and could make their most transparent lies look honest as a consequence; whereas any truth contained in these metaphorical rigmaroles was so deviously presented that it looked devious itself.

A devious spark lit through Al, making me smile. One way. It costs too much, he said. “There’s no inflation in the ever-after, Al.” Call it a recession then. One way.

The mind is reluctant to embrace deep change, and will play devious games to maintain the status quo.

I hope it's not all I'll ever do, but I know I've played enigmatic characters. For me, the good characters are people who get places, are devious, are cunning and tricky and hard to pin down. Obviously, if you play one and you do an okay job of it, that'll be on people's minds.

You've read newspaper stories about elderly widows who die and leave their entire estates to their pet cats, right? Well, your cat reads those stories too, and has spent most of its skulking, devious little life dreaming about inheriting all your money.

Wolves and women are relational by nature, inquiring, possessed of great endurance and strength. They are deeply intuitive, intensely concerned with their young, their mate and their pack. Yet both have been hounded, harassed and falsely imputed to be devouring and devious, overly aggressive, of less value than those who are their detractors.

Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or the highroad to the soul's destination.

There is in the American Government...a want of unity.... The Sailors, the helmsman, the engineer, do not seem to have one purpose or obey one will so that instead of making steady way the vessel may pursue a devious or zigzag course, and sometimes merely turn round and round in the water.

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'.

I like to think I'm not so devious and maniacal. So it's fun to step into that world and put those shoes on and play that character out.

I love playing Rosie on 'Devious Maids,' and I think that if Rosie would have an NFL team to root for, she would also be a Cleveland Browns fan.

There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering. The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.

A HUMAN ELEMENT is an elegant and haunting first novel. Unrelenting, devious but full of heart. Highly recommended.

If you show this devious little liar one atom's worth of compassion I will have you shot.

Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted advisor.

Sometimes I'm so devious I confuse myself.

It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.

He is many things - dangerous and devious, cunning and deadly, a good friend and an implacable enemy - but he comes from an age when a man's word was indeed precious.

Me howling blasts drive devious, tempest-tossed, / Sails ripped, seams opening wide, and compass lost.

I'd like to play a guy who doesn't think so much. I'd like a character whose words come out before he thinks about it. I want a character who is just kind of dumb in that way. A guy who doesn't have too many dangerous, devious ideas. It would be fun to play a role like that.

It's like someone cutting up a loved one in front of you, all the time insisting they've got your best interests at heart. They're very devious nowadays.

Obamacare needs the premiums of healthier people to cover the costs of sicker people. It's a devious con that can only be described as insurance.

With my physicality and my face, I don't think I could pull off a completely righteous guy. There's something devious about my eyes. I like characters with flaws and to see how they overcome those flaws. I want to play real people, and they're flawed, not perfect.

In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.

Within 18 months of my parents' marriage in 1900, my mother fell in love with an Englishman who would have described himself as a gentleman but who was, in fact, nothing more than a devious adventurer.

When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks.'

Thank the Lord, Germanic democracy means just this: that any old climber or moral slacker cannot rise by devious paths to govern his national comrades, but that, by the very greatness of the responsibility to be assumed, incompetents and weaklings are frightened of.

I really like the idea of being a bit unpredictable. I'm known for being a nice, easy-going person with a straightforward exterior. So I think a bit of me wants to be sort of sly and devious.

Lies can be verbal or nonverbal, kindhearted or self-serving, devious or bald-faced; they can be lies of omission or lies of commission; they can be lies that undermine national security or lies that make a child feel better. And each type might involve a unique neural pathway.

We all agree that parents have the primary responsibility of filtering the material that reaches children. However, children are often lured onto websites containing obscene material through the devious manipulation of search engines.

Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward. It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.

When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth. I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth.

The Palio is shrouded in mystery and secrecy, and the players can't discuss their devious schemes.

I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity.

The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.

The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

He sees the land of meaning, and one path to it, and the so-called “normal” people traveling swiftly and in comfort to the land; he does not include the shipwrecked people who arrive by devious lonely routes, and the many who dwell in the land in the beginning.

The Tyranni rule fifty worlds; they are outnumbered hundreds to one. In such a position, simple force is insufficient. Devious methods, intrigue, assassination are their specialties. The net they weave across space is a wide one, and close-meshed. I can well believe that it extends across five hundred light-years to Earth.

The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord." Vetinari looked at his secretary in surprise. "Well, of course it is. It has to deal with the male one.

When members of a certain party concoct various devious schemes to suppress votes, purposely misinform potential voters, spread vile untrue filth about certain candidates, play the race, gender and religious cards, and literally tamper with vote tallies, then we are not a truly representative government!

What do I want in a good fantasy book? Court politics and social interactions based around houses and cities. Powerful women and devious men. Drama and action with emotional ramifications. Frocks. Kissing. Swords. An intense impression of history in the world-building.

I was the best manager in Britain because I was never devious or cheated anyone. I’d break my wife’s legs if I played against her, but I’d never cheat her.

The most disturbing thing, I think, with people that do very morally devious things more and more often is to see that they completely feel that they had no choice in the matter.

In the summer of 1963, my second with 'Sports Illustrated,' Jerry Tax, the basketball editor, got the Celtics' Frank Ramsey, the NBA's first famous sixth man, to do a piece for the magazine revealing some of the devious little tricks of his trade. Things like surreptitiously holding an opponent's shorts - nickel-and-dime stuff.

I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.

I think the word 'progressive' is a very devious term. It was created as a substitute for 'communist.' What they propose is the reverse of progress.

I know, I know. But I can always kill him later. This way, at least we get to humiliate him first.” Finn eyed me. “Sometimes I think you’re even more devious, twisted, and vicious than I am.” I grinned. “You only wish you could be as ruthless as me.” “Absolutely.

Everything is presented in as devious a manner as it could possibly be presented.

There is no devious and dangerous life. I've lived a charmed life, especially in the last thirty years since I've started publishing. I've won the lottery. And I keep winning it every year and I am so fortunate to do something I thoroughly enjoy and still enjoy after a bunch of books.