Quotes About Credulity

As one former fake news writer told 60 Minutes, if it is in a news-ish format and agrees with preexisting biases, people will believe just about anything.12

It is amazing the things people will believe if you catch them early enough.

We live in such a gullible world. Anything that's written, anything that's posted, anything picture that is interpreted one way is taken as truth.

Most people are sceptical about the wrong things and gullible about the wrong things.

He who is caught in a lie is not believed when he tells the truth.

What is too absurd to be believed is believed because it is too absurd to be a lie.

It's only fashion that has said the pendulum has swung from extreme skepticism about extraterrestrial life to extreme credulity. The truth is somewhere in between.

G.K. Chesterton said (in a somewhat different context), "If you believe in nothing, you'll believe in anything." That

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Pleasure is a vain illusion; she draws you on to a thousand follies, errors, and I may say vices, and then leaves you to deplore your thoughtless credulity.

I write about what hoaxers do, but I also want us to think about what believers do. Why do we want to believe a story like James Frey's 'A Million Little Pieces?' Why did we want to believe that Lance Armstrong really did all these things that, looking back, seemed impossible?

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

Indeed, what was remarkable about this scheme wasn't Ponzi. It was his victims. If people really would believe that a 34-year-old ex-bank clerk who had just served three years in prison for check kiting was capable of doubling their money in six months by exchanging millions of 10 cent postal coupons from Europe – well, if they would believe that, then they would believe anything.

chi dice superstizione dice credulità. Chi dice credulità dice manipolazione, e chi dice manipolazione dice calamità. E' la piaga dell'umanità, ha fatto più morti lei di tutte le epidemie di peste messe assieme.

Ceux qui reprochent à nos ancêtres d'avoir été sottement crédules oublient, d'abord qu'on peut également être sottement incrédule, et ensuite qu'en fait de crédulité, il n'y a rien de tel que les illusions dont vivent les soi-disant destructeurs d'illusions ; car on peut remplacer une crédulité simple par une crédulité compliquée [...]

Those who reproach our ancestors with having been stupidly credulous forget in the first place that one can also be stupidly incredulous, and in the second place that the self-styled destroyers of illusion live on illusions that exemplify a credulity second to none. For a simple credulity can be replaced by a complex one [...]

The world is naturally averse to all truth it sees or hears but swallows nonsense and a lie with greediness and gluttony.

People are stupid... They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they're afraid it might be true.

Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.

Far too many people will believe anything of those they hate, no matter how absurd or patently fabricated it may be.

The theologian Meric Casaubon argued—in his 1668 book, Of Credulity and Incredulity—that witches must exist because, after all, everyone believes in them. Anything that a large number of people believe must be true.

Our politics, economics, advertising, and religions (New Age and Old) are awash in credulity. Those who have something to sell, those who wish to influence public opinion, those in power, a skeptic might suggest, have a vested interest in discouraging skepticism

Spurious accounts that snare the gullible are readily available. Skeptical treatments are much harder to find. Skepticism does not sell well.