Quotes About Devious

Clodius was establishing a welfare state gone wild by passing out grain at no cost to a large portion of the city's population. A substantial share of the government revenue suddenly shifted to paying for the largesse of Clodius. It was an obvious ploy to garner the favor of the urban masses, but it worked nonetheless. Clodius was rapidly building up a huge base of populist support to use in his many devious schemes.

That man could hide behind a corkscrew he's so twisted.

Americans had to work around the requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment, and more broadly around their announced traditions of equality; and in consequence their law was a law of covert devices and legal subterfuges. American law, as Krieger wrote, was a law of Umwege, devious legal pathways.

There have been so many misunderstandings in the past. What you did, often, was done for good reason. I know I am simple. I know you are devious. But, oh God, if there is any good reason for what you are doing now; any excuse; any unknown factor or subtle circumstance you are afraid I can't grasp, for the mercy of God, this time, tell me.

You are a devious woman, Blackthorn,' she said. 'I prefer the term strategic thinker.

Himmler was an ambitious, sinister, idealistic creature of devious ways. His ideas on human behaviour had been gleaned from animal breeding lectures at agricultural college years before. The SS had certain affinities to the Jesuit monastic orders, an enforced mysticism which even Hitler found slightly ludicrous: in 1940, witnessing the pagan Yule celebration of the SS Leibstandarte at Christmas, he quietly commented to an adjutant that this would never take the place of 'Silent Night.

To work in this field, you have to become devious yourself. You have to think like a malicious attacker to find weaknesses in your own work. . . . Cryptographers are professional paranoids. It is important to separate your professional paranoia from your real-world life so as not to go completely crazy.

This new approach, it seemed, was not to be made so publicly, not to be exposed to the expedient treason of little devious minds far removed from the battlefields on which honest men met, and contended, and killed one another without malice.

Bullies use various power tactics, such as spreading malicious gossip, excessive criticism, withholding resources or information, excluding a targeted person from the group, and other devious behaviors intended to undermine the confidence and performance of others. Bullies often take aggressive action against individuals in an effort to control and have power over them.

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 wondered if God might have an easier time using animals to communicate who God is, since they do not seem as willful and devious as we are.

That is Pride," explained Wisdom. "It is the hardest enemy to see after you have been in the glory. Those who refuse to put on this cloak will suffer much at the hands of that most devious enemy.

The public regards lawyers with great distrust. They think lawyers are smarter than the average guy but use their intelligence deviously. Well, they're wrong. Usually they are not smarter.

It's harder to kill people. The empathy is so much stronger that the mind must invent new reasons. But, if we can somehow link it to our own survival, the mind will make the devious twists and turns necessary to rationalize it. We're very good at that.

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

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.

She always seems like the one normal person in the family. Then you get to know her better, and you realize that she's cunning, devious and twisted.

Time to do what he did best - plot dastardly acts.

I'm devious, cruel, cunning and addictive.

So we need to be subtle—congenial yet cunning, democratic yet devious.

people with devious minds saw calculation in his honesty.

He could analyze the psychological aspects of the most devious totalitarian regimes, but women would forever be as inscrutable to him as Sanskrit.

the path of rectitude is a straight one, and that he who steps into devious byways is going astray.

Cats were often familiars to workers of magic because to anyone used to wrestling with self-willed, wayward, devious magic—which was what all magic was—it was rather soothing to have all the same qualities wrapped up in a small, furry, generally attractive bundle that looked more or less the same from day to day and might, if it were in a good mood, sit on your knee and purr. Magic never sat on anybody's knee and purred.