Quotes About Obfuscation

Rufe nodded. "Oh, sure, that's CIA style. Throw up a smoke screen—bumfoozle the opposition.

When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are. The secrecy, the obfuscation, the fact that these monsters can only be hinted at, gives us the sense that they must be very bad indeed. But when people let their monsters out for a little onstage interview, it turns out that we've all done or thought the same things, that this is our lot, our condition. We don't end up with a brand on our forehead. Instead we compare notes.

complication …. In that particular foggy business, I couldn't at this moment make out the wood for the trees, but one thing seemed fairly certain: this was

It is undoubtedly the case that things often become complicated which, from the greatness of their importance, should have been kept clear as running water

My dear fellow, I don't think you've the gift of seeing very far. The truth is they don't know what to make of me; — and I don't intend that they shall. I'm playing my game, and there isn't one of 'em understands it except myself. It's no good my sitting here, you know. I shan't be able to move. How am I to get at you if I want anything?

To make a long story short, he went round and round—it helped like cupping helps a corpse.

He that uses many words for the explaining any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

whitewashed

Die, welche schwierige, dunkle, verflochtene, zweideutige Reden zusammensetzen, wissen ganz gewiss nicht recht, was sie sagen wollen, sondern haben nur ein dumpfes, nach einem Gedanken erst ringendes Bewusstsein davon; oft aber wollen sie sich selber und anderen verbergen, dass sie eigentlich nichts zu sagen haben.

To the honor of Spinoza I must mention that his more accurate understanding explained all general concepts as having to the contrary arisen from an obfuscation of that of which one is perceptually cognizant

Civil servants have an extraordinary genius for wrapping up a simple idea to make it sound extremely complicated.

It is the plainest and simplest of things that most daunt and confuse us.

Our disputants put me in mind of the skuttle fish, that when he is unable to extricate himself, blackens all the water about him, till be becomes invisible.

If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.

Everybody knows what a dry text is - one that has left out feeling, one that bores you stiff because if doesn't speak to anything human, hides the obvious under obfuscation, or is simply incomprehensible.

They realized that the best way to mask what they were doing was to hide it in plain sight. Instead of lying about the sweeps themselves, they just lied about what they were sweeping for.

Ken used obfuscation. He kept random people's DNA samples—hair, spare tissue, saliva, whatever—in Tupperware containers. Sometimes he found the samples in public restrooms, disgusting as that might sound. One very good spot was at summer camp. Many of the counselors used the disposable razors, which he could easily swipe. Urinals provided pubic hair. Showers gave you more. With

The math you need for most of finance is ninth-grade algebra, and most people feel reasonably comfortable with that. But I think the financial world there has been - I don't know if it's by design, or this is how it's evolved - there are bad actors who have wanted to obfuscate because you can benefit from the lack of transparency.

I have always had the suspicion that officers assigned to front desk duty were chosen by cunning supervisors because of their skills in obfuscation and disinformation.

Once again, vague terminology helped conceal what was really going on.

Try not to be either intimidated by or a captive of jargon. Even though it's language, and language is about communication, it often exists actually to obfuscate and to control power and not to communicate.

When we are considering species like the apes, which are aptly known as "anthropoids" (humanlike), however, anthropomorphism is in fact a logical choice. Dubbing an ape's kiss "mouth-to-mouth contact" so as to avoid anthropomorphism deliberately obfuscates the meaning of the behavior. It would be like assigning Earth's gravity a different name than the moon's, just because we think Earth is special.