Quotes about trick
page 3

Georgia Hopley photo

“There you have the worst problem for prohibition officials. They resort to all sorts of tricks, concealing metal containers in their clothing, in false bottoms of trunks and traveling bags, and even in baby buggies. On the Canadian, Mexican and Florida borders inspectors are constantly on the lookout for women bootleggers, who try to smuggle liquor into the states. Their detection and arrest is far more difficult than that of the male law-breakers.”

Georgia Hopley (1858–1944) American journalist and temperance advocate

In regards to woman bootleggers. Quoted in "First woman prohibition agent says her sex must see to law enforcement". The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.) March 12, 1922 p. 5.
Quoted in Minnick, Fred (2013). Whiskey Women: The Untold Story of how Women Saved Bourbon, Scotch, and Irish Whiskey pg. 33

Edsger W. Dijkstra photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Thomas Carlyle photo

“Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Bk. III, ch. 8.
1830s, Sartor Resartus (1833–1834)

Joseph Strutt photo
Hayley Jensen photo
Willem de Sitter photo
Tim O'Brien photo
Bill Maher photo
Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
Aron Ra photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Sueton photo

“The courtiers tried every trick to lure or force him into making complaints against Tiberius; always, however, without success. He not only failed to show any interest in the murder of his relatives, but affected an amazing indifference to his own ill-treatment, behaving so obsequiously to his adoptive grandfather and to the entire household, that someone said of him, very neatly: "Never was there a better slave, or a worse master!"”
Haec omnibus insidiis temptatus elicientium cogentiumque se ad querelas nullam umquam occasionem dedit, perinde obliterato suorum casu ac si nihil cuiquam accidisset, quae vero ipse pateretur incredibili dissimulatione transmittens tantique in avum et qui iuxta erant obsequii, ut non immerito sit dictum nec servum meliorem ullum nec deteriorem dominum fuisse.

Source: The Twelve Caesars, Gaius Caligula, Ch. 10

Francis Escudero photo

“It’s the oldest trick in the book. If you are being criticized, create a diversion. Invent tales so that from an aggressor you become the aggrieved party and people will start casting their sympathies at you.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

Gulf News http://gulfnews.com/news/asia/philippines/destabilisation-cry-to-fend-off-graft-criticism-1.142820
2008

“[T]here is no campaign trick or spending level or candidate whisperer that can prevent a party from committing political suicide if it wants to.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Colin Wilson photo
John Milton photo

“If it is the case that one Department of this Government deliberately organised a leak to frustrate a Minister in the same Government, that is not only dirty tricks but a habit that is inimical to the practice of good government in this country.”

John Smith (1938–1994) Labour Party leader from Scotland (1938-1994)

Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 89, col. 1157.
Speech on the Westland affair, 15 January 1986.

Joe Biden photo
George Lakoff photo
Jane Roberts photo
Aristophanés photo

“Agathon: One must not try to trick misfortune, but resign oneself to it with good grace.”

tr. Athen. 1912, vol. 2, p. 278 http://books.google.com/books?id=6fxxAAAAIAAJ&q=%22one+must+not+try+to+trick+misfortune,+but+resign+oneself+to+it+with+good+grace%22
tr. O'Neill 1938, Perseus http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Thes.+198
Thesmophoriazusae, line 198-199
Thesmophoriazusae (411 BC)

James E. Lovelock photo
Logan Pearsall Smith photo

“The disconcerting fact may first be pointed out that if you write badly about good writing, however profound may be your convictions or emphatic your expression of them, your style has a tiresome trick (as a wit once pointed out) of whispering: ‘Don’t listen!’ in your readers’ ears. And it is possible also to suggest that the promulgation of new-fangled aesthetic dogmas in unwieldy sentences may be accounted for—not perhaps unspitefully—by a certain deficiency in aesthetic sensibility; as being due to a lack of that delicate, unreasoned, prompt delight in all the varied and subtle manifestations in which beauty may enchant us.
Or, if the controversy is to be carried further; and if, to place it on a more modern basis, we adopt the materialistic method of interpreting aesthetic phenomena now in fashion, may we not find reason to believe that the antagonism between journalist critics and the fine writers they disapprove of is due in its ultimate analysis to what we may designate as economic causes? Are not the authors who earn their livings by their pens, and those who, by what some regard as a social injustice, have been more or less freed from this necessity—are not these two classes of authors in a sort of natural opposition to each other? He who writes at his leisure, with the desire to master his difficult art, can hardly help envying the profits of money-making authors.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

criticizing the Cambridge School of criticism, e.g. John Middleton Murry and Herbert Read, “Fine Writing,” pp. 306-307
Reperusals and Recollections (1936)

Bernie Sanders photo

“My ears may have been playing a trick on me, but I thought I heard the gentleman a moment ago say something quote unquote about homos in the military. Was I right in hearing that expression? Was the gentleman referring to the thousands and thousands of gay people who have put their lives on the line in countless wars defending this country? Was that the groups of people that the gentleman was referring to? You have insulted thousands of men and women who have put their lives on the line. I think they are owed an apology.”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking to Representative Duke Cunningham on the floor of the House of Representatives, 11 May 1995, from Watch Bernie Sanders Demolish A Republican Over ‘Homos In The Military’ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-duke-cunningham-homophobia_us_56cb75eee4b041136f17dc9f by Zach Carter, The Huffington Post (22 February 2016)
1990s

Derren Brown photo
Orson Scott Card photo
E. W. Howe photo

“Every time you become confidential with some people, you hear of a new kind of dirty trick.”

E. W. Howe (1853–1937) Novelist, magazine and newspaper editor

Country Town Sayings (1911), p211.

Richard Leakey photo
Ignatius Sancho photo
Charles Baudelaire photo

“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”

La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas.
XXIX: "Le Joueur généreux"; The devil describes having heard this statement made by a Parisian preacher
Paraphrased in The Usual Suspects as "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."
Le Spleen de Paris (1862)

Sinclair Lewis photo
Hannah Arendt photo

“What stuck in the minds of these men who had become murderers was simply the notion of being involved in something historic, grandiose, unique ("a great task that occurs once in two thousand years"), which must therefore be difficult to bear. This was important, because the murderers were not sadists or killers by nature; on the contrary, a systematic effort was made to weed out all those who derived physical pleasure from what they did. The troops of the Einsatzgruppen had been drafted from the Armed S. S., a military unit with hardly more crimes in its record than any ordinary unit of the German Army, and their commanders had been chosen by Heydrich from the S. S. élite with academic degrees. Hence the problem was how to overcome not so much their conscience as the animal pity by which all normal men are affected in the presence of physical suffering. The trick used by Himmler — who apparently was rather strongly afflicted by these instinctive reactions himself — was very simple and probably very effective; it consisted in turning these instincts around, as it were, in directing them toward the self. So that instead of saying: What horrible things I did to people!, the murderers would be able to say: What horrible things I had to watch in the pursuance of my duties, how heavily the task weighed upon my shoulders!”

Source: Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963), Ch. VI.

Warren Farrell photo
Bob Seger photo
Fritz Leiber photo
Derren Brown photo

“Dull magic is a collection of tricks: great magic should sting.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Books, Harry Houdini on Deception (foreword) (2009)

Stephen King photo
Madonna photo
Peter Medawar photo
Brian Keith photo
Joseph McManners photo
Aron Ra photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Robert Crumb photo
Roger Ebert photo
Terry Brooks photo

“The trick of course was not to go just anywhere, but to go where they might accomplish something useful.”

Terry Brooks (1944) American writer

Cap 6
The Scions Of Shannara

Ernest Bramah photo
Bruce Springsteen photo
Stephen Colbert photo

“We decided that my character had a pre-show tradition, like a ritual, which was to sing the lyrics to "I Want You To Want Me" by Cheap Trick into the mirror. Because, more than anything else, as much as he says he's bringing the truth, he just wants to be liked.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

Parade web exclusive interview http://www.parade.com/celebrity/articles/070923-stephen-colbert.html (19 September 2007)

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone photo

“There is a sense in which all law is nothing more nor less than a gigantic confidence trick.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

Speech to Devon Magistrates, The Times 12 April 1972.

Rex Stout photo

“The incredible thing happens at the beginning of the story always, you notice, not the end. A Sherlock Holmes story is never a trick story.”

Rex Stout (1886–1975) American writer

Rex Stout, page 246
Invitation to Learning

Ben Jonson photo
Richard Russo photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.”

Tom Peters (1942) American writer on business management practices

Tom Peters in: " The Best Corporate Strategy? None, Of Course http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-07-11/business/9407110026_1_silicon-graphics-customers-richard-branson." Chicago Tribune, July 11, 1994.

Djuna Barnes photo

“What turn of card, what trick of game
Undiced?
And you we valued still a little
More than Christ.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

In General
The Book of Repulsive Women (1915)

“It was jest another instance of a flaw in work of man;
A lefty never figgered in the gunman’s battle plan;
There ain’t no scheme man thinks of that Dame Nature cannot beat —
So his pupils are unlearnin’ that cute trick they got from Pete.”

Arthur Chapman (poet) (1873–1935) American poet and newspaper columnist

Pete's Error http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#PETE, st. 4.
Out Where the West Begins and Other Western Verses http://www.cowboypoetry.com/ac.htm#outbk (1917)

Toni Morrison photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Paul Bourget photo
Frank Herbert photo

“You can say things which cannot be done. This is elementary. The trick is to keep attention focused on what is said and not on what can be done.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

"BuSab [Bureau of Sabotage] Manual"; p. 87
The Bureau of Sabotage series, Whipping Star (1969)

Syd Barrett photo
Tom Robbins photo
Madonna photo
Sri Aurobindo photo
Glen Cook photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Herbert Marcuse photo
Michael Crichton photo
Michel Foucault photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.”

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 18, “Pioneer Party” (p. 187)

Benjamin Graham photo

“It is no difficult trick to bring a great deal of energy, study, and native ability into Wall Street and to end up with losses instead of profits. These virtues, if channeled in the wrong directions, become indistinguishable from handicaps.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter I, What the Intelligent Investor Can Accomplish, p. 11

“A pig can learn more tricks than a dog, but has too much sense to want to do it.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Hollow Horn Bear photo

“Hey trick
Better start actin' right (Whoa oh)
Oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh
Swallow
You know that it's tastin' right (Whoa oh)
Oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh”

Eamon (singer) (1984) American singer

"Girl Act Right"
Lyrics, I Don't Want You Back (2004)

Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Aron Ra photo

“We don’t believe this because we want to! And why would we want to? We believe it because we can prove it really is true, and that applies to everyone whether you want to believe it or not. We’re not just saying you’ve descended from primates either; we’re saying you are a primate! Humans have been classified as primates since the 1700s when a Christian creationist scientist figured out what a primate was –and prompted other scientists to figure out why that applied to us. It wouldn’t be this way if different “kinds” of life had been magically-created unrelated to anything else; not unless God wanted to trick us into believing everything had evolved. Because the phylogenetic tree of life is plainly evident from the bottom up to any objective observer who dares compare the anatomy of different sets of collective life forms. But it can be just as objectively confirmed from the top down when re-examined genetically. This is why it is referred to as a “twin-nested hierarchy”. But there’s still more than that because the evident development of physiology and morphology can be confirmed biochemically as well as chronologically in geology and developmentally in embryology. Why should that be? And how do creationists explain why it is that every living thing fits into all of these daughter sets within parent groups, each being derived according to apparently inherited traits? They don’t even try to explain any of that, or anything else. They won’t because they can’t, because evolution is the only explanation that accounts for any of this, and it explains it all.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

"10th Foundational Falsehood of Creationism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MXTBGcyNuc, Youtube (June 5, 2008)
Youtube, Foundational Falsehoods of Creationism

Richard Dawkins photo
Gracie Allen photo
Bob Dylan photo

“You never turned around to see the frowns, on the jugglers and the clowns when they all did, tricks for you.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Like a Rolling Stone