Devious Quotes

When we think how narrow and devious this path of nature is, how dimly we can trace it, for all our lamps of science, and how from the darkness which girds it round great and terrible possibilities loom ever shadowly upwards, it is a bold and a confident man who will put a limit to the strange by-oaths into which the human spirit may wander.

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.

The mind is reluctant to embrace deep change, and will play devious games to maintain the status quo.

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth.

I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth.

The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain.

What you hold in your hand is proof of man's power - against which our strength means nothing. It has the force of 100 spears. I warn you, man's ingenuity goes hand-in-hand with their cruelty. No creature is as devious or violent.

There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering.

The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.

One of the reasons for conspiracy theories is an assumption that people in high places always know what they are doing. When they do something that makes no sense, devious reasons are imagined by conspiracy theorists, when in fact it may be due to plain old ignorance and incompetence.

We all agree that parents have the primary responsibility of filtering the material that reaches children. However, children are often lured onto websites containing obscene material through the devious manipulation of search engines.

What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensibility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes...

In India nearly everybody spoke metaphorically except the English who spoke bluntly and could make their most transparent lies look honest as a consequence; whereas any truth contained in these metaphorical rigmaroles was so deviously presented that it looked devious itself.

Perhaps some of us have to go through dark and devious ways before we can find the river of peace or highroad to the soul's destination.

I'm buying things for people I don't even know.

I'm like Willy Wonka, but more manipulative. Imagine if Willy Wonka had a devious goal.

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

I'm not so sure he's mad, Father. Just a little devious in his sanity.

The Tyranni rule fifty worlds; they are outnumbered hundreds to one. In such a position, simple force is insufficient. Devious methods, intrigue, assassination are their specialties. The net they weave across space is a wide one, and close-meshed. I can well believe that it extends across five hundred light-years to Earth.

Nothing ever guarantees you anything-that's my rule.

My other rule is never believe anything that anyone tells you, and then you'll never be fooled. It's not as cynical as it sounds; it's just that people always say something for a reason-maybe a nice reason, maybe a devious reason-so on that level, you can't take things at face value.

The tools we use have a profound and devious influence on our thinking habits, and therefore on our thinking abilities.

There is no devious and dangerous life.

I've lived a charmed life, especially in the last thirty years since I've started publishing. I've won the lottery. And I keep winning it every year and I am so fortunate to do something I thoroughly enjoy and still enjoy after a bunch of books.

All our parents have levels of deviousness.

We're driven to write about this discrepancy between the bright shining selves they invented and the monsters lurking underneath.

The Pakistanis are straightforward and sometimes extremely stupid.

The Indians are more devious, sometimes so smart that we fall for their line.

It is often interesting, in retrospect, to consider the trifling causes that lead to great events. A chance encounter, a thoughtless remark - and the tortuous chain reaction of coincidence is set in motion, leading with devious inevitability to some resounding climax.

Luke Jermay is as devious as he's clever, and he's a Master at complication - with this take on TTTCBE he might just fool the Devil.

Human progress is not an uninterrupted march forward.

It is a slow and devious movement with haltings and twistings. The pathway of man ascends and descends, wanders off into mazes. At times the trail seems to lose itself in the wilderness of human passion and folly. But inch by inch it goes forward with halting steps.

Within 18 months of my parents' marriage in 1900, my mother fell in love with an Englishman who would have described himself as a gentleman but who was, in fact, nothing more than a devious adventurer.

Sometimes I'm so devious I confuse myself.

How could you deal with a creature as devious as woman.

Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.

Unable to create a meaningful life for itself, the personality takes its own revenge: from the lower depths comes a regressive form of spontaneity: raw animality forms a counterpoise to the meaningless stimuli and the vicarious life to which the ordinary man is conditioned. Getting spiritual nourishment from this chaos of events, sensations, and devious interpretations is the equivalent of trying to pick through a garbage pile for food.

If we insist that public life be reserved for those whose personal history is pristine, we are not going to get paragons of virtue running our affairs. We will get the very rich, who contract out the messy things in life the very dull, who have nothing to hide and nothing to show and the very devious, expert at covering their tracks and ambitious enough to risk their discovery.

It's like someone cutting up a loved one in front of you, all the time insisting they've got your best interests at heart. They're very devious nowadays.

Audiences always love the baddies. Especially these ones that are so witty and charming and outrageously devious - everything you're not supposed to be. I think it speaks to the basic, primal nature in us.

The Palio is shrouded in mystery and secrecy, and the players can't discuss their devious schemes.

I also wanted to have fun with it. I wanted to have the scope, which I felt Merlin has, in his Machiavellian bi-polar way. He's not to be trusted, yet he is fighting for this great power and is really a master, to some degree, in orchestrating Camelot and King Arthur. He's a strange, dark devious character, and I just wanted to have fun, and get away from the cloak and long beard and pointy hat.