“Sometimes terror and pain are not the best levers; deception, when it works, is the most elegant and least expensive manipulation of all.”
Source: A Fire Upon the Deep (1992), Chapter 14 (p. 145).
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Vernor Vinge 34
American mathematician, computer scientist, and science fic… 1944Related quotes
“The best wedding is that upon which the least trouble and expense is bestowed.”
sayings of Muhammad on the subject of marriage, quoted from T.P. Hughes: Dictionary of Islam.
Dictionary of Islam

Often attributed to Giorgio Vasari, while in the text Vasari attributes these words to Leonardo da Vinci in: Giorgio Vasari. Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects as translated by Mrs. Jonathan Foster (1852), Vol. 2;
Misattributed

“A professional is one who does his best work when he feels the least like working.”

“Art is the most beautiful deception of all!”
Unsourced variant: Art is the most beautiful of all lies.
The Life of the Creative Spirit
Context: Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory. … Let us not disillusion anyone by bringing too much reality into the dream.

“[Black is] the most popular and the most convenient and the most elegant of all colors.”
As quoted in: Fakiko Fukai et al. (2004) Fashion in colors, p. 195

“Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.”

Re: Filk, puns, and other time wasting. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/4bda6a98e5cf0bce (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous