“How easily people fall into hatred. How easily people throw hoaxes and lies. Because they know that nowadays people are also easily instigated, manipulated and agitated.”

Last update Nov. 30, 2023. History

#virus of hatred

“… the stupefying effect spectator sports have in making people passive, atomized, obedient nonparticipants—nonquestioning, easily controlled and easily disciplined”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

"Sports" in How the World Works, p. 169
Quotes 1990s, 1990-1994, Secrets, Lies and Democracy, 1994

“People can so easily be tempted by slackness… and by money.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Like I, of all people, didn't know better than to lead a total stranger to the point where they could hurt me most, knowing how easily they'd be able to find their way back to it.”

Sarah Dessen Lock and Key

Source: Lock and Key

“The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated again and again.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

This misquote could possibly have two possible sources: an abridged version of a paragraph in Mein Kampf regarding the Big Lie, or a report by the United States Office of Strategic Services about Hitler's psychological profile http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html. The second version is very close to an actual quote by Joseph Goebbels. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: The bigger/more blatant a lie, the more people will believe it.

“A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth.”

Daniel Kahneman book Thinking, Fast and Slow

Source: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), Chapter 5, "Cognitive ease", page 62 (ISBN 9780141033570).

“Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

A Mortal Antipathy (1885) This statement is often misquoted as "Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness".

“Socialism is easily understood by any child; it is taking other people's stuff.”

Alan Charles Kors (1943) American academic

2010s, Socialism's Legacy (2011)

“A person, who had not mastered the art of the proofs in high school, is as a rule unable to distinguish correct reasoning from that which is misleading. Such people can be easily manipulated by the irresponsible politicians.”

Vladimir I. Arnold (1937–2010) Russian mathematician

"The antiscientifical revolution and mathematics" (1998, Vatican).

“Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book Discourses on Livy

Book 1, Chapter 39
Discourses on Livy (1517)
Context: Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions. Thus, it is an easy matter for him who carefully examines past events to foresee future events in a republic and to apply the remedies employed by the ancients, or, if old remedies cannot be found, to devise new ones based upon the similarity of the events. But since these matters are neglected or not understood by those who read, or, if understood, remain unknown to those who govern, the result is that the same problems always exist in every era.

“How easily people fall into hatred. How easily people throw hoaxes and lies. Because they know that nowadays people are also easily instigated, manipulated and agitated.”

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