“
The best teachers impart knowledge through sleight of hand, like a magician.
”
”
Kate Betts (My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine)
“
La plus belle des ruses du diable est de vous persuader qu'il n'existe pas."
("The devil's finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.")
”
”
Charles Baudelaire (Paris Spleen)
“
Happiness, you see, its just an illusion of Fate, a heavenly sleight of hand designed to make you believe in fairy tales. But there's no happily ever after. You'll only find happy endings in books. Some books.
”
”
Ellen Hopkins
“
I coax my palm into his lapel in search of my wish, returning his feverish kisses.
"Checkmate, you son of a bug," I say against his mouth two seconds before my fingers find an empty pocket.
"Sleight of hand, blossom," he says right back. " 'Tis in fact in my pants pocket, if you'd like to search there.
”
”
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
“
A lot of people experience the world with the same incredulity as when a magician pulls a rabbit out of a hat.…We know that the world is not all sleight of hand and deception because we are in it, we are part of it. Actually we are the white rabbit being pulled out of the hat. The only difference beween us and the white rabbit is that the rabbit does not realize it is taking part in a magic trick.
”
”
Jostein Gaarder (Sophie’s World)
“
Women are like tricks by sleight of hand,
Which, to admire, we should not understand
”
”
William Congreve
“
She held out her right hand, palm up. "Duct tape." She did the same with her other hand. "M&M's. If I can't fix whatever's wrong with those two things, I'm going home and getting back into bed.
”
”
Sofie Kelly (Sleight of Paw (A Magical Cats Mystery, #2))
“
Words are the writer's sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They're our enchantment and our temptation
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Self-Publishing In the Eye of the Storm)
“
I hate small talk. It is small. Small is for teacups and occasionally for tiny houses. Too much small talk is how a country is given to sociopaths who thrive on shallow chatter to distract their emotional sleight of hand. Talk should be meaningful or kept to a minimum.
”
”
Tressie McMillan Cottom (Thick: And Other Essays)
“
I have loved works of fiction precisely for their illusions, for the author's sleight-of-hand in showing me the magic, what appeared in the right hand but not in the left...
”
”
Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning)
“
There are spaces between the events we see where things get past us. Magicians know this too, with their sleight of hand tricks. If you can find the rhythm of those spaces, the openings in time, you can hide whole worlds inside them.
”
”
Kenneth Calhoun (Black Moon)
“
Between Ricky’s charm and persuasion and Gabriel’s lock picking and sleight of hand, if I took enough lessons, I could become a first-rate private eye. Or a master criminal.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (Visions (Cainsville, #2))
“
Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch and most magnanimous virtues!
”
”
Charles Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby)
“
Your prowess with a lightsaber is childish vanity. Your physical Force powers are no more than a conjurer's trick, sleight of hand to dazzle the ordinary beings you should be serving. You profane these powers by using them as weapons in war. And you fail to grasp the single, simple, uncompromising duty of the true Jedi. The Jedi is the rock-lion at the gate who says, "I will defend these beings with my life, and that is the sum of me." Etain Tur-Mukan died to save one life, a man she did not even know, but felt compelled to save, and that is what made her stronger in the Force and a truer Jedi than any of you acrobats, tricksters, and specious, empty philosophers.
”
”
Karen Traviss
“
She saw now that he was like an illusionist who captivated women with a little sleight of hand and once she had seen the mechanism it had lost all power for her.
”
”
Anna Godbersen (Envy (Luxe, #3))
“
They taught you a lot of things, your family,' I say. The sleight of hand, the wall climbing, the swordsmanship.
'Not to die,' he says. 'That's what they attempted to teach me, anyway. Not to die.'
Considering how often he throws himself directly into the path of danger, I do not think they taught him well enough.
”
”
Holly Black (The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1))
“
Uber drivers, summoned by phone, awaited them and drove them to the restaurant. This 'sleight of hand' was Father Jon's idea. Jennifer felt like an actress in a James Bond movie, but she appreciated the subterfuge.
”
”
Mark M. Bello (Betrayal of Faith (Zachary Blake Legal Thriller, #1))
“
Stories never end. We end.
”
”
Peter S. Beagle (Sleight of Hand)
“
The mind is mysterious. A master of sleight of hand.
”
”
Maggie Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful)
“
That’s Manhattan today—all the money goes up top, while the infrastructure wastes away from neglect. The famous skyline is a cheap trick now, a sleight-of-hand to draw your eye from the truth, as illusory as a bodybuilder with osteoporosis.
”
”
Andrew Vachss (Mask Market (Burke #16))
“
But I do not want to paint our circumstantial portraits so that we both emerge with enough well-rounded, spuriously detailed actuality that you are forced to believe in us. I do not want to practise such sleight of hand. You must be content only with glimpses of our outlines, as if you had caught sight of our reflections in the looking-glass of somebody else’s house as you passed by the window.
”
”
Angela Carter (Burning Your Boats: The Collected Short Stories)
“
We’re so used to being edited, so infected with the sleight of hand of the media, that we’re more aware of what’s been added than of what has been taken away.
”
”
Michael Marshall (The Straw Men)
“
A trial is not a science fair, but rather a magic show. A show based on appearances and logical fallacies and sleight of hand. It isn’t about proof. It is about convincing the jury.
”
”
Errol Morris (A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald)
“
Along with the mystical wonderment and sense of ecological responsibility that comes with the recognition of connectedness, more disturbing images come to mind. When applied to economics, connectedness seems to take the form of chain stores, multinational corporations, and international trade treaties which wipe out local enterprise and indigenous culture. When I think of it in the realm of religion, I envision smug missionaries who have done such a good job of convincing native people everywhere that their World-Maker is the same as God, and by this shoddy sleight of hand have been steadily impoverishing the world of the great fecundity and complex localism of belief systems that capture truths outside the Western canon. And I wonder—if everything's connected, does that mean that everything can be manipulated and controlled centrally by those who know how to pull strings at strategic places?
”
”
Malcolm Margolin
“
Unfortunately, the term “identity politics” has been weaponized. It is most often used by speakers to describe politics as practiced by members of historically marginalized groups. If you’re black and you're worried about police brutality, that’s identity politics. If you’re a woman and you’re worried about the male-female pay gap, that’s identity politics. But if you’re a rural gun owner decrying universal background checks as tyranny, or a billionaire CEO complaining that high tax rates demonize success, or a Christian insisting on Nativity scenes in public squares — well, that just good, old fashioned politics. With a quick sleight of hand, identity becomes something that only marginalized groups have.
The term “identity politics,” in this usage, obscures rather than illuminates; it’s used to diminish and discredit the concerns of the weaker groups by making them look self-interested, special pleading in order to clear the agenda for the concerns of stronger groups, which are framed as more rational, proper topics for political debate. But in wielding identity as a blade, we have lost it as a lens, blinding ourselves in a bid for political advantage. WE are left searching in vaid for what we refuse to allow ourselves to see.
”
”
Ezra Klein (Why We're Polarized)
“
The world of the everyday suddenly seemed nothing but an inverted magic act, lulling its audience into believing in the usual, familiar conceptions of space and time, while the astonishing truth of quantum reality lay carefully guarded by nature's sleights of hand.
”
”
Brian Greene (The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality)
“
(C)hoice without alternative is only a sleight of hand; it is a magician's force-play, during which you believe you have free well, but your fate has already been decided: the magician knows which card you will pick!
”
”
Garth Stein (A Sudden Light)
“
Mass was like grand opera, a magic show with the most expensive props in town. And faith, a sleight of hand trick, in which one was both the magician and the audience; the deceiver and the deceived. Still, who could resist a good magic trick?
”
”
Kathleen Tessaro (The Perfume Collector)
“
There is always some sleight of hand going on in writing autobiography. So much has to be left out, especially things that might hurt or dismay people. But in a novel one can say everything. The novel is often autobiography distilled and / or transcended.
”
”
May Sarton (At Seventy: A Journal)
“
Duct tape." She did the same with her other hand. "M&M's. If I can't fix whatever's wrong with those two things, I'm going home and getting back into bed.
”
”
Sofie Kelly (Sleight of Paw (A Magical Cats Mystery, #2))
“
The troubled drinker’s sleight of hand—dividing your confessions among close friends but never leaving any one person doused with too much truth.
”
”
Sarah Hepola (Blackout: Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget)
“
We ought not think of all magic as simply sleight of hand or eye-tricking illusions. Magic is a real feature of the world that God has made.
”
”
Joe Rigney (Live Like a Narnian: Christian Discipleship in Lewis's Chronicles)
“
The first isn’t necessarily the last, but it will always be the first, and that’s special. Firsts are special.”
“You’re not first,” Peter says. “But you’re the most special to me, because you’re the girl I love, Lara Jean.”
Love. He said “love.” I feel dizzy. I am a girl who is loved, by a boy, and not just her sisters and father and dog. A boy with beautiful eyebrows and a sleight of hand.
”
”
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
“
This is the gift and the sorrow of the Athanate; to see your loves pass before you like the days of summer while your heart still beats. To keep your vigil in the shadows and rise again with every sun.
”
”
Mark Henwick (Sleight of Hand (Bite Back, #1))
“
Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breath life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded,not of thinking rational people.
”
”
Terry Goodkind (Chainfire (Sword of Truth, #9))
“
All of us in modern society are hemmed in by a dense network of rules and regulations. We are at the mercy of large organizations such as corporations, governments, labor unions, universities, churches, and political parties, and consequently we are powerless. As a result of the servitude, the powerlessness, and the other indignities that the System inflicts on us, there is widespread frustration, which leads to an impulse to rebel. And this is where the System plays its neatest trick: Through a brilliant sleight of hand, it turns rebellion to its own advantage.
Many people do not understand the roots of their own frustration, hence their rebellion is directionless. They know that they want to rebel, but they don’t know what they want to rebel against. Luckily, the System is able to fill their need by providing them with a list of standard and stereotyped grievances in the name of which to rebel: racism, homophobia, women’s issues, poverty, sweatshops… the whole laundry-bag of “activist” issues.
”
”
Theodore John Kaczynski (Technological Slavery)
“
persuading himself that he was a most
conscientious and glorious martyr, [he] nobly resolved to do what, if he had examined his own heart a little more carefully, he would have found he could not resist. Such is the sleight of hand by which we juggle with ourselves, and change our very weaknesses into stanch
and most magnanimous virtues!
”
”
Charles Dickens
“
The problem with the politicians of both parties in the US is that neither of them have a real agenda except to feather their own nests. They both have their hands deep in corporate pockets. All the rest is sleight of hand and distraction to keep the public occupied with trivia, divided against each other, and thinking their vote matters.
”
”
Michael Hogan
“
Like many shy people, once he began talking he seemed not to know how to stop; he lacked the social sleight of hand to change the subject, and he had no idea how to engage another person. Like a runaway vehicle, he plunged on, heedless.
”
”
Joyce Carol Oates (Sourland)
“
In the art of magic, keeping a secret is the greatest sleight.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Extraordinary magic first gets gasp and then applause, ordinary magic only gets applause.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
...the only real fool is the last fool
”
”
Mark Henwick (Sleight of Hand (Bite Back, #1))
“
You tread a difficult path, Amber. You are none of the things they will think you are. In the end, you will have no guides but yourself.
”
”
Mark Henwick (Sleight of Hand (Bite Back, #1))
“
Performing magic in the live show thrills me. Just get me a deck of cards and some attentive audience, and I have made my day and theirs too
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Storytelling draws on the magic of language to created Elsewheres. Writers use a linguistic sleight-of-hand to take an attribute, attach them to new objects, and create enchantment.
”
”
Maria Tatar (Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood)
“
Accountability ought to mean being held responsible for one’s actions. But by a sort of linguistic sleight of hand, accountability has come to mean demonstrating success through standardized measurement, as if only that which can be counted really counts.
”
”
Jerry Z. Muller (The Tyranny of Metrics)
“
All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself. Surely a curious thing. That I should innocently take a bad half-crown of somebody else's manufacture, is reasonable enough; but that I should knowingly reckon the spurious coin of my own make, as good money! An obliging stranger, under pretence of compactly folding up my bank-notes for security's sake, abstracts the notes and gives me nutshells; but what is his sleight of hand to mine, when I fold up my own nutsells and pass them on myself as notes!
”
”
Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)
“
At some point, no matter how repressive the regime, the citizenry will come to comprehend the vast power in their hands. The destitute, the Indebted, the beleaguered middle classes; in short, the myriad victims. Control was sleight of hand trickery, and against a hundred thousand defiant citizens, it stood no real chance.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Reaper's Gale (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #7))
“
Anyway, the fervent hope of every undisciplined person (even an undisciplined genius) is that his current worthlessness and stupidity is someone else's fault. If—in the best of cases—it is society's fault, then society can be made to pay. This sleight-of-hand maneuver transforms the undisciplined into the admirable rebel, at least in his own eyes, and allows him to seek unjustified revenge in the disguise of the revolutionary hero. A more absurd parody of heroic behavior can hardly be imagined.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief)
“
The old crone smiles crookedly and sighs. “There is more to magic than darkness, my dear.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
Demento's laugh is wildflowers and bourbon on an autumns day just before winter comes to take it all away.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
An amateur magician with affection is more delightful to watch than an expert magician with arrogance.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
It had been a couple of years and I was neither dead, nor undead, which I ranked as an achievement.
”
”
Mark Henwick (Sleight of Hand (Bite Back, #1))
“
First her body goes missing, then her finger.
”
”
Bliss Addison (Sleight of Hand)
“
Magic is a lie, but magician need not be a liar.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
A chef’s magic is his ingredients, how he can substitute one for another, then break with convention by changing it all around again without once referring to the recipe. And then just at the death complete the beauty by adding another element never previously thought of. Well words are the writer’s sorcery, our dark arts and our sleight of hand. They’re our enchantment and our temptation. Sometimes both the chef and the writer overindulges himself and it gets out of hand, but that’s how we like it, it’s how we’ve ghosted some of our best creations.
”
”
Karl Wiggins (Self-Publishing In the Eye of the Storm)
“
Yoo hoo! Mr Nobody! Mr Nameless! Mr Master of Illusion! Mr Sleight of Hand, grandson of thieves and liars!
We're here too, the ones without names. The other ones without names. The ones with shame stuck onto us by others. The ones pointed at, the ones fingered.
The chore girls, the bright-cheeked girls, the juicy gigglers, the cheeky young wigglers, the young bloodscrubbers.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (The Penelopiad)
“
I hope that I will never let you down. I know that this can be more than just flashing lights and sound. Look around and you'll see that at times it feels like no one really cares. It gets me down but I'm still gonna try to do what's right. I know that there's a difference between sleight of hand, and giving everything you have. There's a line drawn in the sand. I'm working up the will to cross it.
”
”
Thrice
“
Faith is a device of self-delusion, a sleight of hand done with words and emotions founded on any irrational notion that can be dreamed up. Faith is the attempt to coerce truth to surrender to whim. In simple terms, it is trying to breathe life into a lie by trying to outshine reality with the beauty of wishes. Faith is the refuge of fools, the ignorant, and the deluded, not of thinking, rational men.
”
”
Terry Goodkind (Chainfire (Sword of Truth, #9))
“
I do not despise believers. I find them neither ridiculous nor pathetic, but I lose all hope when I see that they prefer the comforting fairy tales of children to the cruel hard facts of adults. Better the faith that brings peace of mind than the rationality that brings worry--even at the price of perpetual mental infantilism. What a demonstration of metaphysical sleight of hand--and what a monstrous price!
”
”
Michel Onfray
“
I coax my palm into his lapel in search of my wish, returning his feverish kiss. "Checkmate, you son of a bug," I say against his mouth two seconds before my fingers find an empty pocket.
"Sleight of hand, blossom," he says right back. "'Tis in fact in my pants pocket, if you'd like to search there."
I shove him off and drop to the floor, wiping my mouth. "It's mine!"
"And you'll receive it when the time is right." His lips, all I can look at, tilt into that smug smile that I've come to detest. He motions toward the chair. "Sit. You've just been soundly kissed. No doubt you're short of breath."
"Don't flatter yourself." I huff in an effort to hide the gulp of air and hold the teddy bear against my chest. "That kiss meant nothing. It had underlying motivation."
"Oh, to be sure. That kiss was nothing if not motivational.
”
”
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
“
Leonardo is both an extraordinary left-brained academician obsessed with portraying perspective correctly and an impish right-brained trickster who takes delight in fooling the viewer with perspectivist sleights of hand.
”
”
Leonard Shlain (Leonardo's Brain: Understanding Da Vinci's Creative Genius)
“
Kaylee,
For over a hundred years, magicians have been pulling objects out of hats. Rabbits, flowers... It's become such a famous trick that rabbits are known to represent magic in general.
I'm a magician. I've been pulling things from hats since I learned the trick at ten years old. It's all about sleight of hand. Misdirection.
Distraction.
What people don't really know is it isn't the magician that makes the trick magical. It's the object. What is a zig-zag box without the blades? What is a cage without a dove?
The object is the spark--the real reason why the illusion is worth seeing, worth doing, worth discovering.
Sometimes magicians lose their rabbits. They get lost in the act, or the magician makes a mistake and has to coax the rabbit back out. Because without the rabbit, the trick is useless. Without the rabbit, the hat becomes insignificant.
Kaylee Elizabeth Sperling, you are the rabbit to my hat, and I love you. Please forgive me for losing the spark in your trick. I will do whatever I can to make it up to you, starting with this deck of cards. 52 reasons why I love you. And I could fill another deck. Perhaps two more or three.
Whatever it takes to coax my rabbit back out.
-Nate
”
”
Cassie Mae (True Love and Magic Tricks (Beds, #0.5))
“
(...) grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding in the fact that there is no one even got you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps will never have, an object of your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
“
A passionately tumultuous age wants to overthrow everything, subvert everything. A revolutionary but passionless and reflecting age changes the manifestation of power into a dialectical sleight-of-hand, letting everything remain but slyly defrauding it of its meaning; it culminates, instead of in an uprising, in the exhaustion of the inner reality of the relationships, in a reflecting tension that nevertheless lets everything remain; and it has transformed the whole of existence into an equivocation.
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard
“
A magician creates magic and mesmerizes the audience. But it is a pantomime, and the audience knows that it’s a ruse. It’s in the name: a “magic trick”. They play along when the magician tugs his sleeves to show there is nothing hidden within them, or that the top hat is empty of a rabbit, or eggs, or flowers. Beneath the façade there is only sleight of hand, wires and contraptions, misdirection at a key moment.
“But what the audience does not realize is that it’s not always trickery. Or at least, not quite.
”
”
L.R. Lam (Shadowplay (Micah Grey, #2))
“
Too often critics have taken as the sole and crucial matter of fantasy the preoccupation of Tolkien, the quest for a remedy to the world's pain that will not destroy innocence with the temptations of power. Impressive and popular as The Lord of the Rings is, it manages its landscapes, vast green-leaved or slag-heaped vistas of pathetic fallacy and implied morality, far better than its people; it leaves the impression that important issues have been turned by sleight of hand and Georgian prettiness into questions of good and bad practice in urban planning and rural conservation. After all, the Grail is only worth seeking if you can believe in a god who put it there to help those who help themselves, in an Avalon to which burned-out heroes can retire with dignity. There is another great Matter for fantasy, one of more obvious resonance for the creative artist - the reconciliation of faerie and humanity; of the passion, power and wit of a world of sensuality, magic, and danger with the requirements of kind and ordinary life.
”
”
Roz Kaveney
“
Unlike when people lived in small communities and could not escape their past behavior, we live in an age of anonymous one-time encounters, and many people have become expert at the art of fast persuasion. Trust, formerly earned through actions, is now purchased with sleight of hand, and sleight of words. I encourage women to explicitly rebuff unwanted approaches, but I know it is difficult to do. Just as rapport-building has a good reputation, explicitness applied by women in this culture has a terrible reputation. A woman who is clear and precise is viewed as cold, or a bitch, or both. A woman is expected, first and foremost, to respond to every communication from a man. And the response is expected to be one of willingness and attentiveness. It is considered attractive if she is a bit uncertain (the opposite of explicit). Women are expected to be warm and open, and in the context of approaches from male strangers, warmth lengthens the encounter, raises his expectations, increases his investment, and, at best, wastes time. At
”
”
Gavin de Becker (The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence)
“
Tired of that hermeneutical delirium, the workers turned away from the authorities in Macondo and brought their complaints up to the higher courts. It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
“
Kerényi was as aware as anybody today of the territorial limits of Greek myths and of the non-importability of Hermes. He writes: “In his ‘such-ness,’ he is an historical fact that cannot, by strict and honest historical means, be reduced to something else: neither to a concept, to a ‘power,’ nor to a ‘spirit’ – a gravestone or signpost spirit – not even to an idea that would not contain in a nutshell everything that Hermes’ ‘such-ness’ constitutes.” …
Working more in Hermes’ own sleight of hand way, Kerényi is soon saying things like this: “If a god is ‘idea’ and ‘world,’ he remains nonetheless in connection with the world that contains all such ‘worlds’; he can only be an ‘aspect of the world,’ while the world of which he is an aspect possesses such idea-aspects.” Now, if you will let Kerényi get away with a statement like that – and I hope you will – you will end up owning the Brooklyn Bridge. … Kerényi’s Hermes is the only one that is going to rob you or enrich you, enlighten you or screw you. …
“Guide of Souls” is the usual translation given to the Hermes-epithet “Psychopompos” and it refers to his role as the god who leads souls into the underworld when they die. But πομπóς (still present in every French funeral store’s “Pompes funèbres” description of itself) is more than guide, and even more than guide to the underworld. It means to lead, but Hermes as leader is not quite right either. It means something more like to lead on. Hermes is the god who “leads you on.” … This means he is deceiving you, taking advantage of your gullibility, “taking you for a ride.” That, however, is how Hermes works, and how he gets your soul to move anywhere, how he gets you to budge even a hair off whatever you’re in … .
… Go ahead and buy the Brooklyn Bridge from this man. Be had. Be incorrect. Be foolish. You pay with your soul for this kind of reading. And Hermes does not take plastic.
”
”
Karl Kerényi (Hermes: Guide of Souls)
“
When Isaac Newton embarked on his great program, he encountered a fundamental lack of definition where it was most needed. He began with a semantic sleight of hand: “I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all,” he wrote deceptively. Defining these words was his very purpose. There were no agreed standards for weights and measures. Weight and measure were themselves vague terms. Latin seemed more reliable than English, precisely because it was less worn by everyday use, but the Romans had not possessed the necessary words either.
”
”
James Gleick (The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood)
“
But I will tell you one of the most important secrets,” said Neil. “You
have to believe in your own magic. This is what makes a magician great. He
believes the story he is telling to the audience, he believes in himself. It’s not
about the illusions, or the applause, or any sleight of hand. It’s about the
magician’s ability to believe in himself and his ability to have the audience
believe in him. A trick is never done at the expense of the audience. Magic
isn’t a hustle or a con. A real magician transports the audience to a world
where anything is possible, everything is real, and the unbelievable becomes
believable
”
”
James R.Doty
“
After checking into the Hotel Monaco in downtown Seattle, Dana walked to Yesler Way, a steep street known as Skid Road in the 1850s, when the area was teeming with trees and a chute was used to skid logs to Henry Yesler’s sawmill. When Seattle’s city center moved north, the area became a dilapidated haven for drunks and derelicts and went from being called Skid Road to Skid Row, a term eventually used all over America to refer to a down-and-out section of a town or city.
”
”
Phillip Margolin (Sleight of Hand (Dana Cutler #4))
“
Doom,” Madame Luna whispers, “but of the most beautiful kind.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
She is a corpse, the kind brought back to life to consume the living and wreak satanic havoc like in the Penny Dreadfuls she used to read as a child.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
Her velvet red locks pour out of either side of her hood, hanging over her chest like blood.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
Throwing her head back she laughs, the sound falling around Gwen like stardust.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
Honestly, the pair of you" was Edward's response. I brushed cracker crumbs off my homework folder; I'd needed a snack after giving up most of my lunch. "Silly infants. Don't you know the way people see you has absolutely nothing to do with the way you actually look? Beauty is all sleight of hand. Just ask Holbein. Or Bobbi Brown."
"I thought Beauty was Truth," I said wearily. I had a headache, and three pages of French to translate.
"That is Keats. I am not overly fond of Keats. Had he not died so poetically early, people might have realized he was not quite what they thought he was."
"The same could be said of you," I shot back. I was a little annoyed by the "silly infants" comment.
"Oh, so clever. What's the worst-case scenario, should you give the Bainbridge boy a try?"
"Well,gosh.Lemme see." I ticked off a few possibilites on my fingers. "Humilation, humiliation, mortification, and humiliation."
Edward sniffed. "Qui craint de souffrir, il souffre deja de ce qu'il craint."
"And what does that mean?" I recognized it from the second page of my homework.
"Well,gosh,darling Ella.You'll just have to ask your new tutor, won't you?" he said silkily. Right before he went back to emulating a lump of metal.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Optical Illusion"
Time is a stage magician
Pulling sleight-of-hand tricks
To make you think things go.
There
Eclipsed by the quick scarf
A lifetime of loves.
Zip—
The child is man.
Zip—
The friend in your arms
Is earth.
Zip—
The green tree is gold, is white,
Is smoking ash, is gone.
Zip—
Time's trick goes on.
All things loved—
Now you see them, now you don't.
Oh, this world has more
Of coming and of going
Than I can bear.
I guess it's eternity I want,
Where all things are
And always will be,
Where I can hold my loves
A little looser,
Where finally we realize
Time
Is the only thing that really dies.
”
”
Carol Lynn Pearson (Beginnings and Beyond)
“
Tired of that hermeneutical delirium, the workers turned away from the authorities in Macondo and brought their complaints up to the higher courts. It was there that the sleight-of-hand lawyers proved that the demands lacked all validity for the simple reason that the banana company did not have, never had had, and never would have any workers in its service because they were all hired on a temporary and occasional basis. So that the fable of the Virginia ham was nonsense, the same as that of the miraculous pills and the Yuletide toilets, and by a decision of the court it was established and set down in solemn decrees that the workers did not exist.
”
”
Gabriel García Márquez (One Hundred Years of Solitude)
“
Perhaps her parents are still with her, even after all these years. Carving a celestial path for her which she follows blindly. Whispering encouragement in her ears and reminding her why she chose the life she now leads. Avenge us.
”
”
Ilse V. Rensburg (Sleight of Hand)
“
Note the emerging pattern, which we will see again: while criticizing government action that threatened his own liberty as a property owner, Calhoun saw nothing untoward in calling on the federal government to use its police powers to help his class stifle debate about its practices. That sleight of hand—denying the legitimacy of government power to act for the common good while using government power to suppress others—appears repeatedly in the pages that follow
”
”
Nancy MacLean (Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America)
“
Mungo didn’t know how to respond to that. His mother was like a carnival magician, she was forever working some sleight of hand, sucking in her paunch, or turning different faces to these men. Jodie had said it was like how McCallum’s the baker kept turning their old wedding cakes in their window when the icing had yellowed in the sunlight. By the time some poor punter sliced into the fruit cake, it’d be too late to complain that it was claggy and unappetizing and soaked in rank old booze.
”
”
Douglas Stuart (Young Mungo)
“
Among the darker nations, Paris is famous for two betrayals. The first came in 1801, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent General Victor Leclerc to crush the Haitian Revolution, itself inspired by the French Revolution. The French regime could not allow its lucrative Santo Domingo to go free, and would not allow the Haitian people to live within the realm of the Enlightenment's " Rights of Man." The Haitians nonetheless triumphed, and Haiti became the first modern colony to win its independence.
The second betrayal came shortly after 1945, when a battered France, newly liberated by the Allies, sent its forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been its colonial subjects. Many of these regions had sent troops to fight for the liberation of France and indeed Europe, but they returned home emptyhanded. As a sleight of hand, the French government tried to maintain sovereignty over its colonies by repackaging them as " overseas territories." A people hungry for liberation did not want such measly hors d'oeuvres.
”
”
Vijay Prashad (The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World)
“
The United States believes it has the right to prosecute any company that has concluded a contract in US dollars, or even if emails – considered as international trade instruments – have simply been exchanged, stored (or transited) via servers based in the United States (such as Gmail or Hotmail). With this law, the Americans have succeeded in pulling off a neat sleight of hand. They have transformed a law that could have weakened their own industry into a formidable instrument of underground economic warfare and intervention.
”
”
Frédéric Pierucci (The American Trap: My battle to expose America's secret economic war against the rest of the world)
“
Lost,” the captain repeated. “I am surely that.” “Yet you and I, Lull, we are lost late in our lives. Look upon the children, and despair.” “How to answer this? I must know, Duiker, else I go mad.” “Sleight of hand,” the historian said. “What?” “Think of the sorcery we’ve seen in our lives, the vast, unbridled, deadly power we’ve witnessed unleashed. Driven to awe and horror. Then think of a trickster—those you saw as a child—the games of illusion and artifice they could play out with their hands, and so bring wonder to your eyes.” The captain was silent, motionless. Then he rose. “And there’s my answer?” “It’s the only one I can think of, friend. Sorry if it’s not enough.” “No, old man, it’s enough. It has to be, doesn’t it?” “Aye, that it does.” “Sleight of hand.” The historian nodded. “Ask for nothing more, for the world—this world—won’t give it.” “But where will we find such a thing?” “Unexpected places,” Duiker replied, also rising. Somewhere ahead, shouts rose and the convoy resumed its climb once more. “If you fight both tears and a smile, you’ll have found one.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2))
“
I don't myself think much of science as a phase of human development. It has given us a lot of ingenious toys; they take our attention away from the real problems, of course, and since the problems are insoluble, I suppose we ought to be grateful for distraction. But the fact is, the human mind, the individual mind, has always been made more interesting by dwelling on the old riddles, even if it makes nothing of them. Science hasn't given us any new amazements, except of the superficial kind we get from witnessing dexterity and sleight-of-hand. It hasn't given us any richer pleasures, as the Renaissance did, nor any new sins-not one! Indeed, it takes our old ones away. It's the laboratory, not the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world. You'll agree there is not much thrill about a physiological sin. We were better off when even the prosaic matter of taking nourishment could have the magnificence of a sin. I don't think you help people by making their conduct of no importance-you impoverish them. As long as every man and woman who crowded into the cathedrals on Easter Sunday was a principal in a gorgeous drama with God, glittering angels on one side and the shadows of evil coming and going on the other, life was a rich thing. The king and the beggar had the same chance at miracles and great temptations and revelations. And that's what makes men happy, believing in the mystery and importance of their own little individual lives. It makes us happy to surround our creature needs and bodily instincts with as much pomp and circumstance as possible. Art and religion (they are the same thing, in the end, of course) have given man the only happiness he has ever had.
”
”
Willa Cather (The Professor's House)
“
It’s a lie that these people exist, that this story is real, or even possible. The happily ever after carries on after you’ve read those words: The End. You, the reader, come to me begging for that lie. You relish it. That lie provides you with comfort, with entertainment, with emotions your real life may lack. You know exactly what I’m doing, but like any accomplished magician, you don’t know how I do it. Even the above explanation doesn’t show you how I tell my lies, or how I perform the magic, the sleight of hand, the prestidigitation which turns ideas in my brain into real people on the page.
”
”
Jasinda Wilder (The Cabin)
“
You didn’t warn us about this, Readier,’ said Stowley resentfully.
Gilt waved his hands. ‘We must speculate to accumulate!’ he said. ‘The Post Office? Trickery and sleight of hand. Oh, von Lipwig is an ideas man, but that’s all he is. He’s made a splash, but he’s not got the stamina for the long haul. Yet as it turns out he will do us a favour. Perhaps we have been . . . a little smug, a little lax, but we have learned our lesson! Spurred by the competition we are investing several hundred thousand dollars—’
‘Several hundred?’ said Greenyham.
Gilt waved him into silence, and continued: ‘—several hundred thousand dollars in a challenging, relevant and exciting systemic overhaul of our entire organization, focusing on our core competencies while maintaining full and listening co-operation with the communities we are proud to serve. We fully realize that our energetic attempts to mobilize the flawed infrastructure we inherited have been less than totally satisfactory, and hope and trust that our valued and loyal customers will bear with us in the coming months as we interact synergistically with change management in our striving for excellence. That is our mission.’
An awed silence followed.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Going Postal (Discworld, #33; Moist von Lipwig, #1))
“
Some thoughts, possessing a frightening kind of self-awareness, knew to hide deep beneath others, riding unseen the same currents, where they could grow unchallenged, unexposed by any horrified recognition. One could always sense them, of course, but that was not the same as slashing through all the obfuscation, revealing them bared to the harsh light and so seeing them wither into dust. The mind ran its own shell-game, ever amused at its own sleight of hand misdirection – in truth, this was how one tended to live, from moment to moment, with the endless exchange of denials and deference and quick winks in the mirror, even as inner proclamations and avowals thundered with false willpower and posturing conviction.
”
”
Steven Erikson (Toll the Hounds (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8))
“
Not one word was said by Moses or Aaron as to the wickedness of depriving a human being of his liberty. Not a word was said in favor of liberty. Not the slightest intimation that a human being was justly entitled to the product of his own labor. Not a word about the cruelty of masters who would destroy even the babes of slave mothers. It seems to me wonderful that this God did not tell the king of Egypt that no nation could enslave another, without also enslaving itself; that it was impossible to put a chain around the limbs of a slave, without putting manacles upon the brain of the master. Why did he not tell him that a nation founded upon slavery could not stand? Instead of declaring these things, instead of appealing to justice, to mercy and to liberty, he resorted to feats of jugglery. Suppose we wished to make a treaty with a barbarous nation, and the president should employ a sleight-of-hand performer as envoy extraordinary, and instruct him, that when he came into the presence of the savage monarch, he should cast down an umbrella or a walking stick, which would change into a lizard or a turtle; what would we think? Would we not regard such a performance as beneath the dignity even of a president? And what would be our feelings if the savage king sent for his sorcerers and had them perform the same feat? If such things would appear puerile and foolish in the president of a great republic, what shall be said when they were resorted to by the creator of all worlds? How small, how contemptible such a God appears!
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (Some Mistakes of Moses)
“
How much better it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall; not to be reconciled to one of those impossibilities and stone walls if it disgusts you to be reconciled to it; by the way of the most inevitable, logical combinations to reach the most revolting conclusions on the everlasting theme, that even for the stone wall you are yourself somehow to blame, though again it is as clear as day you are not to blame in the least, and therefore grinding your teeth in silent impotence to sink into luxurious inertia, brooding on the fact that there is no one even for you to feel vindictive against, that you have not, and perhaps never will have, an object for your spite, that it is a sleight of hand, a bit of juggling, a card-sharper's trick, that it is simply a mess, no knowing what and no knowing who, but in spite of all these uncertainties and jugglings, still there is an ache in you, and the more you do not know, the worse the ache.
”
”
Fyodor Dostoevsky (Notes from Underground)
“
Kaz had never been able to dodge the horror of that night in the Ketterdam harbor, the memory of his brother’s corpse clutched tight in his arms as he told himself to kick a little harder, to take one more breath, stay afloat, stay alive. He’d found his way to shore, devoted himself to the vengeance he and his brother were owed. But the nightmare refused to fade. Kaz had been sure it would get easier. He would stop having to think twice before he shook a hand or was forced into close quarters. Instead, things got so bad he could barely brush up against someone on the street without finding himself once more in the harbor. He was on the Reaper’s Barge and death was all around him. He was kicking through the water, clinging to the slippery bloat of Jordie’s flesh, too frightened of drowning to let go.
The situation had gotten dangerous. When Gorka once got too drunk to stand at the Blue Paradise, Kaz and Teapot had to carry him home. Six blocks they hauled him, Gorka’s weight shifting back and forth, slumping against Kaz in a sickening press of skin and stink, then flopping onto Teapot, freeing Kaz briefly—though he could still feel the rub of the man’s hairy arm against the back of his neck.
Later, Teapot had found Kaz huddled in a lavatory, shaking and covered in sweat. He’d pleaded food poisoning, teeth chattering as he jammed his foot against the door to keep Teapot out. He could not be touched again or he would lose his mind completely.
The next day he’d bought his first pair of gloves—cheap black things that bled dye whenever they got wet. Weakness was lethal in the Barrel. People could smell it on you like blood, and if Kaz was going to bring Pekka Rollins to his knees, he couldn’t afford any more nights trembling on a bathroom floor.
Kaz never answered questions about the gloves, never responded to taunts. He just wore them, day in and day out, peeling them off only when he was alone. He told himself it was a temporary measure. But that didn’t stop him from remastering every bit of sleight of hand wearing them, learning to shuffle and work a deck even more deftly than he could barehanded. The gloves held back the waters, kept him from drowning when memories of that night threatened to drag him under. When he pulled them on, it felt like he was arming himself, and they were better than a knife or a gun.
”
”
Leigh Bardugo (Crooked Kingdom (Six of Crows, #2))
“
The illusionists of quantity are performing sleights of hand wherever it concerns the topic of quality. A profession that went from being second in command under the throne, to outsourced to the cheapest external providers, is perhaps one of greatest conflicts of interest society faces today, not to mention the blatant disrespect of the people quality is intended for in the first place.
Quality is about ascertaining the absolute best, for the sake of all involved. It therefore, is a lofty profession combining research, science, and morality to make the best judgements for today based on the history of the past in order to most adequately prepare for an ever oncoming future. Most importantly, quality removes personal preference that is not in the best interest of all people. Thus, anyone who would launch a war on quality can be considered an enemy of mankind, as they are would be purveyors of an ultimate breach of trust and security.
Until the concept of quality is reinstituted as the governing advisor in all aspects of society, sychophants will chant "more" is "better". They will sell mediocrity at top dollar, and make top profits. Mediocrity should not be the accepted, celebrated standard, it should be the rudimentary blueprint for the greatest rollouts of progress ever marked in human history.
”
”
Justin Kyle McFarlane Beau
“
Thank you, Clara,” I say. “How did you get the key?”
“Dumb luck,” she says. “Those twins with the funny names dropped it just a few feet away from me.”
“They… dropped it?” Those guys are the most skilled sleight-of-hand tricksters I’ve ever seen. Hard to imagine either of them dropping anything.
“Yeah, they were juggling a bunch of things between them as they walked. The key just fell and they didn’t notice.”
“But you did.”
“Sure.”
“How did you know it was the key to our police car?”
She lifts the key tag to show me. It’s a clear plastic holder that’s probably meant for pictures. This one frames a piece of paper with a note scrawled in little-kid block letters: “Penryn’s police car—Super Secret.”
If I ever see the twins again, it looks like I owe them a zombie-girl mud fight.
”
”
Susan Ee (World After (Penryn & the End of Days, #2))
“
We've known for a long time that this day would come. Today, an illegitimate Supreme Court-- stacked with justices who have been credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault, installed by presidents who took power via undemocratic sleights of hand-- ratified their cause of eroding the 14th amendment and the right to bodily autonomy. The decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will be lethal to Americans - particularly, Black women and queer people - who now will lose their already limited access to abortions. If establishment Democrats sit back and allow this Court to continue to dismantle every right protecting marginalized people, this decision won't just cost lives - it also will cost us our democracy. Our leaders in Washington must recognize how the tyranny of the minority, white supremacy, misogyny and bigotry brought us to this dark day. And they must act now to protect voting rights and enshrine the right to an abortion into federal law -- before it's too late.
”
”
Kimberlé Crenshaw
“
Among the best shows were these, some of which have attained cult followings: The Most Dangerous Game (Oct. 1, 1947), a showcase for two actors, Paul Frees and Hans Conried, as hunted and hunter on a remote island; Evening Primrose (Nov. 5, 1947), John Collier’s too-chilling-to-be-humorous account of a misfit who finds sanctuary (and something else that he hadn’t counted on) when he decides to live in a giant department store after hours; Confession (Dec. 31, 1947), surely one of the greatest pure-radio items ever done in any theater—Algernon Blackwood’s creepy sleight-of-hand that keeps a listener guessing until the last line; Leiningen vs. the Ants (Jan. 17, 1948) and Three Skeleton Key (Nov. 15, 1949), interesting as much for technical achievement as for story or character development (soundmen Gould and Thorsness utilized ten turntables and various animal noises in their creation of Three Skeleton Key’s swarming pack of rats); Poison (July 28, 1950), a riveting commentary on intolerance wrapped in a tense struggle to save a man from the deadliest snake in the world—Jack Webb stars
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
Aubade"
Who lives where summer
ends knows the hard cold of
autumn is blissfully
close, although it feels
each season newly un-
known. You are constantly
newly unknown to me,
my night-glowing open-hearted
sting-of-salt weather.
Rains and winds, sleights-of-
hand. Who if not you
could weigh me enough
down. You’d paint my eyes
blacker and warmer than they are
and soon they would carry
whole calendars of
black night in them.
You say you’re pulled back,
but it is a rare thing inside those
shocks of minutes that
holds without our even
needing to touch it.
Maybe you think you trade
one clean joy for
another. But mine is darker,
slanted, nitrous blue at the root,
an acrostic of what is
most free and
far. To be another
person than the one
you were before means
more than I understand.
But my gradual hands
move in streams
over you whether you travel or not,
as you drop into sleep or not,
and in the book of this
most-alone-place I am
there only when you feel
need, a coat so thin and so like
skin you can touch the
slopes, the smoother
pools, dust-mooded
winds over roads, the skeleton
instrument of your voice
as it richens the maps
and paths, summer’s last
shades of white on dark soil,
as if the moon-moth and
house-mouth were
close against the lashes
of your eyes, puzzles-in-
flutter, or wandering
off through the warm night air,
unlikely ever again to find
such light as this.
from Boston Review: August 21, 2013
”
”
Joanna Klink
“
Jack’s eyes glinted with humor. “Do we have to start with that?”
“What else would we start with?”
“Couldn’t you ask me something like, ‘How did your morning go?’ or ‘What’s your idea of the perfect day?’”
“I already know what your idea of the perfect day is.”
He arched a brow as if that surprised him. “You do? Let’s hear it.”
I was going to say something flip and funny. But as I stared at him, I considered the question seriously. “Hmmn. I think you’d be at a cottage at the beach . . .”
“My perfect day includes a woman,” he volunteered.
“Okay. There’s a girlfriend. Very low-maintenance.”
“I don’t know any low-maintenance women.”
“That’s why you like this one so much. And the cottage is rustic, by the way. No cable, no wireless, and you’ve both turned off your cell phones. The two of you take a morning walk along the beach, maybe go for a swim. And you pick up a few pieces of seaglass to put in a jar. Later, you both ride bikes into the town, and you head for the outfitters shop to buy some fishing stuff . . . some kind of bait—”
“Flies, not bait,” Jack said, his gaze not moving from mine. “Lefty’s Deceivers.”
“For what kind of fish?”
“Redfish.”
“Great. So then you go fishing—”
“The girlfriend, too?” he asked.
“No, she stays behind and reads.”
“She doesn’t like to fish?”
“No, but she thinks it’s fine that you do, and she says it’s healthy for you to have separate interests.” I paused. “She packed a really big sandwich and a couple of beers for you.”
“I like this woman.”
“You go out in your boat, and you bring home a nice catch and throw it on the grill. You and the woman have dinner. You sit with your feet up, and you talk. Sometimes you stop to listen to the sounds of the tide coming in. After that, the two of you go on the beach with a bottle of wine, and sit on a blanket to watch the sunset.” I finished and looked at him expectantly. “How was that?”
I had thought Jack would be amused, but he stared at me with disconcerting seriousness. “Great.”
And then he was quiet, staring at me as if he were trying to figure out some sleight-of-hand trick.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Smooth Talking Stranger (Travises, #3))
“
The sensational event of the ancient world was the mobilisation of the underworld against the established order. This enterprise of Christianity had no more to do with religion than Marxist socialism has to do with the solution of the social problem. The notions represented by Jewish Christianity were strictly unthinkable to Roman brains. The ancient world had a liking for clarity. Scientific research was encouraged there. The gods, for the Romans, were familiar images. It is some what difficult to know whether they had any exact idea of the Beyond. For them, eternal life was personified in living beings, and it consisted in a perpetual renewal. Those were conceptions fairly close to those which were current amongst the Japanese and Chinese at the time when the Swastika made its appearance amongst them.
It was necessary for the Jew to appear on the scene and introduce that mad conception of a life that continues into an alleged Beyond! It enables one to regard life as a thing that is negligible here below—since it will flourish later, when it no longer exists. Under cover of a religion, the Jew has introduced intolerance in a sphere in which tolerance formerly prevailed. Amongst the Romans, the cult of the sovereign intelligence was associated with the modesty of a humanity that knew its limits, to the point of consecrating altars to the unknown god.
The Jew who fraudulently introduced Christianity into the ancient world—in order to ruin it—re-opened the same breach in modern times, this time taking as his pretext the social question. It's the same sleight-of-hand as before. Just as Saul was changed into St. Paul, Mardochai became Karl Marx.
Peace can result only from a natural order. The condition of this order is that there is a hierarchy amongst nations. The most capable nations must necessarily take the lead. In this order, the subordinate nations get the greater profit, being protected by the more capable nations.
It is Jewry that always destroys this order. It constantly provokes the revolt of the weak against the strong, of bestiality against intelligence, of quantity against quality. It took fourteen centuries for Christianity to reach the peak of savagery and stupidity. We would therefore be wrong to sin by excess of confidence and proclaim our definite victory over Bolshevism. The more we render the Jew incapable of harming us, the more we shall protect ourselves from this danger. The Jew plays in nature the rôle of a catalysing element. A people that is rid of its Jews returns spontaneously to the natural order.
In 1925 I wrote in Mein Kampf (and also in an unpublished work) that world Jewry saw in Japan an opponent beyond its reach. The racial instinct is so developed amongst the Japanese therefore compelled to act from outside. It would be to the considered interests of England and the United States to come to an understanding with Japan, but the Jew will strive to prevent such an understanding. I gave this warning in vain. A question arises. Does the Jew act consciously and by calculation, or is he driven on by his instinct? I cannot answer that question.
The intellectual élite of Europe (whether professors of faculties, high officials, or whatever else) never understood anything of this problem. The élite has been stuffed with false ideas, and on these it lives. It propagates a science that causes the greatest possible damage. Stunted men have the philosophy of stunted men. They love neither strength nor health, and they regard weakness and sickness as supreme values.
Since it's the function that creates the organ, entrust the world for a few centuries to a German professor—and you'll soon have a mankind of cretins, made up of men with big heads set upon meagre bodies.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)