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...instead it seems that business - like weight loss - is a subject wherein hope and fear inspire limitless gullibility.
Sep 24, 2025
The true meaning of Christmas is actually centuries of gullibility.
I have a plan. It entails leading to a fair deal and relationship with the British. We will be reasonable, but we will also negotiate firmly and without gullibility. I believe we must come to an agreement for the people of Britain and the people on the Continent, but not under exclusively British terms.
Gullibility is the key to all adventures. The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he who gets the most out of life.
Never underestimate the gullibility of large pools of money.
Man's principle trait is a readiness to believe anything. Otherwise, how could the Church have survived for almost two thousand years in the absense of universal gullibility?
Martyrdom is often the result of excessive gullibility.
The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.
Swindlers are notoriously gullible.
Vanity is easily duped. Ambition, not.
if we don't stand for something, you may be sure we will fall for anything.
Faith never means gullibility. The man who believes everything is as far from God as the man who refuses to believe anything.
the most important quality of an inept person is to rely on popular belief and hearsay.
When emotion supersedes reason ... gullibility must follow.
The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people.
What is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas. If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish useful ideas from the worthless ones.
Extreme skepticism and extreme gullibility are two equal ways of not having to think at all. And I don't think I'm the first to say that.
In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity, but a frequent cause of it.
We live surrounded by a systematic appeal to a dream world which all mature, scientific reality would reject. We, quite literally, advertise our commitment to immaturity, mendacity and profound gullibility. It is as the hallmark of the culture. And it is justified as being economically indispensable.
There's a gullible side to the American people. They can be easily misled. Religion is the best device used to mislead them.
Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.
I'm so gullible. I'm so damn gullible. And I am so sick of me being gullible.
The cure-alls of the present day are infinitely various and infinitely obliging. Applied psychology, autosuggestion, and royal roads to learning or to wealth are urged upon us by kindly, if not altogether disinterested, reformers. Simple and easy systems for the dissolution of discord and strife; simple and easy systems for the development of personality and power. Booklets of counsel on 'How to Get What We Want,' which is impossible; booklets on 'Visualization,' warranted to make us want what we get, which is ignoble.
Credulity is the sister of innocence.
The age of credulity is every age the world has ever known. Men have always turned from the ascertained, which is limited and discouraging, to the dubious, which is unlimited and full of hope for everybody.
Gullibility and credulity are considered undesireable qualities in every department of human life - except religion ... Why are we praised by godly men for surrendering our 'godly gift' of reason when we cross their mental thresholds?
A little credulity helps one on through life very smoothly.
And that's the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.
I prefer credulity to skepticism and cynicism for there is more promise in almost anything than in nothing at all.
Credulity is belief in slight evidence, with no evidence, or against evidence.
The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
Nothing convinces persons of a weak understanding so effectually, as what they do not comprehend.
As to how I would guide someone who is confused about the idea of God, I would suggest that he or she begins identifying what one might called "philosophical friends," - people with whom one could seriously examine our thought about God through listening to each other, reading important and useful books together and trying to think for oneself while familiarizing oneself with the ideas of some of the world's great thinkers. Cultivate openness without gullibility and skepticism without cynicism.
Because desperation breeds gullibility. People want to lose weight so much that their common sense shuts off.
Credulity is always a ridiculous, often a dangerous failing: it has made of many a clever man, a fool; and of many a good man, a knave.
You can call it innocence, or you can call it gullibility, but Celia made the most common mistake of the good-hearted: she assumed that everyone else was just like her.
Considering mankind's indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.
Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about.
When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
Be open minded, but not so open minded that your brains fall out.
He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly-headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs.
Religions, of course, have their own demanding intellectual traditions, as Jesuits and Talmudic scholars might attest.... But, in its less rigorous, popular forms, religion is about as intellectually challenging as the average self-help book. (Like personal development literature, mass market books about spirituality and religion celebrate emotionalism and denigrate reason. They elevate the "truths" of myths and parables over empiricism.) In its more authoritarian forms, religion punishes questioning and rewards gullibility. Faith is not a function of stupidity but a frequent cause of it.
A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.
The brilliant Schiller was wrong in his Joan of Arc when he said against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. It is actually by means of the gods that we make our stupidity and gullibility into something ineffable.
Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.
Being myself animated by feelings of affection toward my fellowmen, I am saddened by the modern system of advertising. Whatever evidence it offers of enterprise, ingenuity, impudence, and resource in certain individuals, it proves to my mind the wide prevalence of that form of mental degradation which is called gullibility.
If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you.
You Americans are so gullible. No, you won't accept communism outright, but we'll keep feeding you small doses of socialism until you'll finally wake up and find you already have communism. We won't have to fight you. We'll so weaken your economy until you'll fall like overripe fruit into our hands.
Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous. . . .
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.