We begin as dupes and end as scoundrels.

A forward critic often dupes us With sham quotations peri hupsos, And if we have not read Longinus, Will magisterially outshine us. Then, lest…

— Jonathan Swift

A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true.

— Demosthenes

Extraordinarily excessive sensuality it may be .. but it all comes down to the same thing in the end, and one means is surely…

— Remy de Gourmont

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.

— Edmund Burke

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we…

— Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and…

— George Washington

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in…

— Washington Irving

The weak-minded man is the slave of his vices and the dupe of his virtues.

— Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

Let nothing dupe you! Such is the horrible maxim that acts as a solvent upon every noble feeling man experiences.

— Honore de Balzac

Ratings agencies are highly conflicted, unimaginative dupes. They are blissfully unaware of adverse selection and moral hazard. Investors should never trust them.

— Seth Klarman

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that…

— John Calvin

The bonds between ourselves and another person exists only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by…

— Marcel Proust

Pessimists fear becoming the dupes of Hope. Optimists enjoy Hope's company, and consider being duped no great matter.

— Mason Cooley

Women are ever the dupes or the victims of their extreme sensitiveness.

— Honore de Balzac

PHRENOLOGY, n. The science of picking the pocket through the scalp. It consists in locating and exploiting the organ that one is a dupe…

— Ambrose Bierce