Sunday, September 19, 2021 – A Nation of Suckers
If you’re playing a poker game and you look around the table and can’t tell who the sucker is, it’s you. ~ Paul Newman
Happy endings are for suckers. Even Old Yeller had to die. ~ Steve Braunstein
Evil is a sucker for solidity. It always goes for big numbers, for confident granite, for ideological purity, for drilled armies and balanced sheets. ~ Joseph Brodsky
The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves. ~ Edmund Burke
Men would not live long in society were they not the dupes of each other. ~ François de la Rochefoucauld
Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
One thing that kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. “Oh, no,” I said. “Disneyland burned down.” He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late. ~ Jack Handy
All children have to be deceived if they are to grow up without trauma. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro
A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could. ~ William Hazlitt
As to the deceit perpetrated upon women, let it pass, for, when love is in the way, men and women as a general rule dupe each other. ~ Giacomo Casanova
Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can’t be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time. ~ Helen Rowland
The fear of being deceived is the vulgar version of the Quest for Truth. ~ Emile M. Cioran
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. ~ Richard P. Feynman
A fellow who is always declaring he’s no fool usually has his suspicions. ~ Wilson Mizner
It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country. ~ Will Durant
A fool and his money are soon elected. ~ Will Rogers
A fool and his money are soon parted, but it is remarkable how many fools have money to part from. ~ Edgar Guest
A rich man without charity is a rogue; and perhaps it would be no difficult matter to prove that he is also a fool. ~ Henry Fielding
It’s morally wrong to allow a sucker to keep his money. ~ W. C. Fields
Never give a sucker an even break. ~ W. C. Fields
Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death. ~ Rosalind Russell
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
He who hesitates is a damned fool. ~ Mae West
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it. ~ Henry David Thoreau
A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about. ~ Miguel de Unamuno
To succeed in the world, it is much more necessary to possess the penetration to discern who is a fool, than to discover who is a clever man. ~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand
A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married. ~ H. L. Mencken
Experience keeps a dear school, yet fools will learn in no other. ~ Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac
The greatest pleasure of a dog is that you make a fool of yourself with him and not only will he not scold you, but he will make a fool of himself too. ~ Samuel Butler
You can’t argue with all of the fools in the world. It’s easier to let them have their way, then trick them when they’re not paying attention. ~ Christopher Paolini
Fools and wise-folk are alike harmless. It is the half-wise, and the half-foolish, who are the most dangerous. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
When you’re young, try to be realistic; as you get older, become idealistic. You’ll live longer. ~ Anthony J. D’Angelo
Optimism was for children. Once you reached adulthood then you had to join the rest of the world as a realist – life was a bag of shit you were expected to pay for. ~ N. C. Thomas
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life. ~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
When people have given up on happiness, they call themselves “realists.” ~ Marty Rubin
Satire is people as they are; romanticism, people as they would like to be; realism, people as they seem with their insides left out. ~ Dawn Powell
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick
Reality leaves a lot to the imagination. ~ John Lennon
People will kill you over time, and how they’ll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases, like “be realistic.” ~ Dylan Moran
The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails. ~ William Arthur Ward
The secret of life is to appreciate the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived. ~ Oscar Wilde
Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted. ~ William Hazlitt
Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived. ~ Sissela Bok
Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them. ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
Sometimes we are less unhappy in being deceived by those we love, than in being undeceived by them. ~ Lord Byron
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves. ~ Eric Hoffer
Men are always sincere. They change sincerities, that’s all. ~ Tristan Bernard
Frank and explicit – this is the right line to take when you wish to conceal your own mind and to confuse the mind of others. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
The only good in pretending is the fun we get out of fooling ourselves that we fool somebody. ~ Booth Tarkington
I give you bitter pills in sugar coating. The pills are harmless: the poison is in the sugar. ~ Stanislaw Lee
Just Above Sunset 