Spreading Rumours Quotes

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.

The crickets felt it was their duty to warn everybody that summertime cannot last for ever. Even on the most beautiful days in the whole year - the days when summer is changing into autumn - the crickets spread the rumour of sadness and change.

Rumours are like sexually transmitted diseases, both are spread by whores.

My past conduct was so transparent and so honest that when my enemies spread rumours about me nobody believed them.

Rumours began with the whispered gossip of native servants and spread quickly to the rest of the population.

It was in China, late one moonless night, The Simorgh first appeared to mortal sight – He let a feather float down through the air, And rumours of its fame spread everywhere...

Spreading rumours is our national past time

Rumours of Damen’s enslavement in Vere had spread like fire through the camp. To see the Veretian Prince wear the gold cuff of a palace bed slave in turn was shocking, intimate, a symbol of Damen’s ownership. Damen

I suppose that rumours must have spread about me, and you are probably still having a hard time as a result. If that’s the case, I made a mistake in not quitting sooner than I did. I try to live a blameless life, but am crushed at times by peoples’ lack of understanding. Sometimes you just have to use your wits. That’s something else I should have told you.

It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.

Spread joy and laughter, not hate and rumors.

You can measure the stupidity level of a certain population by how fast a rumour spreads through its people.

I don't listen to rumours. I only spread them.

probably (as the rumour had spread through the town, reaching her ears) one of the poor maddened turn-outs,

We’re descended from the watching-his-every-move, spreading-rumours-that-he’s-impotent, accusing-him-of-flirting-with-his-mum, jealous bitches.

but rumours are like germs. They spread and multiply almost in a breath and, before you know it, everyone is contaminated.

We had no such thing as printed newspapers in those days to spread rumours and reports of things, and to improve them by the invention of men, as I have lived to see practised since.

We do not put to the test those things which cause our fear; we do not examine into them; we blench and retreat just like soldiers who are forced to abandon their camp because of a dust-cloud raised by stampeding cattle, or are thrown into a panic by the spreading of some unauthenticated rumour.

In short, there is still life in the tradition which the Middle Ages inaugurated. But the maintenance of that life depends, in part, on knowing that the knightly character is art not nature—something that needs to be achieved, not something that can be relied upon to happen. And this knowledge is specially necessary as we grow more democratic. In previous centuries the vestiges of chivalry were kept alive by a specialized class, from whom they spread to other classes partly by imitation and partly by coercion. Now, it seems, the people must either be chivalrous on its own resources, or else choose between the two remaining alternatives of brutality and softness. This is, indeed, part of the general problem of a classless society, which is too seldom mentioned. Will its ethos be a synthesis of what was best in all the classes, or a mere “pool” with the sediment of all and the virtues of none? But that is too large a subject for the fag-end of an article. My theme is chivalry. I have tried to show that this old tradition is practical and vital. The ideal embodied in Launcelot is “escapism” in a sense never dreamed of by those who use that word; it offers the only possible escape from a world divided between wolves who do not understand, and sheep who cannot defend, the things which make life desirable. There was, to be sure, a rumour in the last century that wolves would gradually become extinct by some natural process; but this seems to have been an exaggeration.

There have been riots. When word spread of the attacks rumours started about a Denier plot. Soon it was common knowledge a hidden army of Cumbraelins was waiting in the sewers to murder us all in our beds.” He shook his head in disgust. “Ignorant people will believe anything if they’re scared enough.

But when vague rumours got abroad, that in this Protestant association a secret power was mustering against the government for undefined and mighty purposes; when the air was filled with whispers of a confederacy among the Popish powers to degrade and enslave England, establish an inquisition in London, and turn the pens of Smithfield market* into stakes and cauldrons; when terrors and alarms which no man understood were perpetually broached, both in and out of Parliament, by one enthusiast who did not understand himself, and by-gone bugbears which had lain quietly in their graves for centuries, were raised again to haunt the ignorant and credulous; when all this was done, as it were, in the dark, and secret invitations to join the Great Protestant Association in defence of religion, life, and liberty, were dropped in the public ways, thrust under the house-doors, tossed in at windows, and pressed into the hands of those who trod the streets by night; when they glared from every wall, and shone on every post and pillar, so that stocks and stones appeared infected with the common fear, urging all men to join together blindfold in resistance of they knew not what, they knew not why;—then the mania spread indeed, and the body, still increasing every day, grew forty thousand strong.

September 1939 From: His Majesty’s Government To: Civilian Population of Great Britain For the duration of the war, the following Seven Rules are to be observed at all times. Do not waste food. Do not talk to strangers. Keep all information to yourself. Always listen to government instructions and carry them out. Report anything suspicious to the police. Do not spread rumours. Lock away anything that might help the enemy if we are invaded.

The four had rented a riverside cottage and lived together there as two couples. Their vice was public, official and perfectly obvious to all. It was referred to quite naturally as something entirely normal. There were rumours about jealous scenes that took place there and about the various actresses and other famous women who frequented the little cottage near the water’s edge. One neighbour, scandalized by the goings-on, alerted the police at one stage and an inspector accompanied by one of his men came to make enquiries. It was a delicate mission: there was nothing the women could be prosecuted for, least of all prostitution. The inspector was deeply puzzled and could not understand what these alleged misdemeanours could possibly be. He asked a whole lot of pointless questions, compiled a lengthy report and dismissed the charges out of hand. The joke spread as far as Saint-Germain.

They set out the next morning just at sunrise. The vultures that top the taller, deader trees are spreading their black wings so the dew on them will evaporate; they’re waiting for the thermals to help them lift and spiral. Crows are passing the rumours, one rough syllable at a time. The smaller birds are stirring, beginning to cheep and trill; pink cloud filaments float above the eastern horizon, brightening to gold at the lower edges. Some days the sky looks like old paintings of heaven: there should be a few angels floating around, their white robes deployed like the skirts of archaic debutantes, their pink toes daintily pointed, their wings aerodynamically impossible. Instead, there are gulls.

To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party. It was not desirable that the proles should have strong political feelings. All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism which could be appealed to whenever it was necessary to make them accept longer working-hours or shorter rations. And even when they became discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontent led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances. The larger evils invariably escaped their notice. The great majority of proles did not even have telescreens in their homes.

The newspapers, according to their political colour, urged punishment, eradication, colonisation or a crusade against the newts, a general strike, resignation of the government, the arrest of newt owners, the arrest of communist leaders and agitators and many other protective measures of this sort. People began frantically to stockpile food when rumours of the shores and ports being closed off began to spread, and the prices of goods of every sort soared; riots caused by rising prices broke out in the industrial cities; the stock exchange was closed for three days. It was simply the more worrying and dangerous than it had been at any time over the previous three or four months. But this was when the minister for agriculture, Monsieur Monti, stepped dexterously in. He gave orders that several hundred loads of apples for the newts should be discharged into the sea twice a week along the French coasts, at government cost, of course. This measure was remarkably successful in pacifying both the newts and the villagers in Normandy and elsewhere. But Monsieur Monti went even further: there had long been deep and serious disturbances in the wine-growing regions, resulting from a lack of turnover, so he ordered that the state should provide each newt with a half litre of white wine per day. At first the newts did not know what to do with this wine because it caused them serious diarrhoea and they poured it into the sea; but with a little time they clearly became used to it, and it was noticed that from then on the newts would show a lot more enthusiasm for sex, although with lower fertility rates than before. In this way, problems to do with the newts and with agriculture were solved in one stroke; fear and tension were assuaged, and, in short, the next time there was another government crisis, caused by the financial scandal around Madame Töppler, the clever and well proven Monsieur Monti became the minister for marine affairs in the new cabinet.

This way please,' said a voice. In the door stood Dr Sesame, the famous Dr Sesame, whose reputation as a sympathetic and, according to some, also a kind-hearted man had spread throughout the town and beyond. He had also written a popular pamphlet on sexual problems, which had given Pinneberg the courage to write making an appointment for Emma and himself. This, then, was the Dr Sesame at present standing in the doorway, and saying 'This way, please.' Dr Sesame searched on his desk for the letter. 'You wrote to me, Mr Pinneberg... saying you couldn't have any children just yet because you couldn't afford it?' 'Yes,' said Pinneberg, dreadfully embarrassed. 'You can start undressing,' said the doctor to Emma, and carried on: 'And you want to know an entirely reliable means of prevention. Hm, an entirely reliable means...' He smiled sceptically behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. 'I read about it in your book... These pessoirs...' 'Pessaries,' said the doctor. 'Yes, but they don't suit every woman. And it's always a bit of a business. It depends on whether your wife would be nimble-fingered enough...' He looked up at her. She had already taken off her blouse and skirt. Her slim legs made her look very tall. 'Well, let's go next door,' said the doctor. 'You needn't have taken your blouse off for this, young lady.' Emma went a deep red. 'Oh well, leave it off now. Come this way. One moment, Mr Pinneberg.' The two of them went into the next room. Pinneberg watched them go. The top of the doctor's head reached no farther than the 'young lady's' shoulders. How beautiful she was! thought Pinneberg yet again; she was the greatest girl in the world, the only one for him. He worked in Ducherow, and she worked here in Platz, and he never saw her more than once a fortnight, so his joy in her was always fresh, and his desire for her absolutely inexpressible. Next door he heard the doctor asking questions on and off in a low voice, and an instrument clinking on the side of a bowl. He knew that sound from the dentist's; it wasn't a pleasant one. Then he winced violently. Never had he heard that tone from Emma. She was saying in a high, clear voice that was almost a shriek - 'No, no, no!' And once again, 'No!' And then, very softly, but he still heard it: 'Oh God.' Pinneberg took three steps to the door - What was that? What could it be? What about these rumours that those kind of doctors were terrible lechers? But then Dr Sesame spoke again - impossible to hear what he said - and the instrument clinked again. There was a long silence.

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with uncheckedI am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with uncheckedI am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they’re not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure. I find that they’re not true without looking further than myself. I don’t deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

My dear Marwan, in the long summers of childhood, when I was a boy the age you are now, your uncles and I spread our mattress on the roof of your grandfathers’ farmhouse outside of Hom. We woke in the mornings to the stirring of olive trees in the breeze, to the bleating of your grandmother's goat, the clanking of her cooking pots, the air cool and the sun a pale rim of persimmon to the east. We took you there when you were a toddler. I have a sharply etched memory of your mother from that trip. I wish you hadn’t been so young. You wouldn't have forgotten the farmhouse, the soot of its stone walls, the creek where your uncles and I built a thousand boyhood dams. I wish you remembered Homs as I do, Marwan. In its bustling Old City, a mosque for us Muslims, a church for our Christian neighbours, and a grand souk for us all to haggle over gold pendants and fresh produce and bridal dresses. I wish you remembered the crowded lanes smelling of fried kibbeh and the evening walks we took with your mother around Clock Tower Square. But that life, that time, seems like a dream now, even to me, like some long-dissolved rumour. First came the protests. Then the siege. The skies spitting bombs. Starvation. Burials. These are the things you know You know a bomb crater can be made into a swimming hole. You have learned dark blood is better news than bright. You have learned that mothers and sisters and classmates can be found in narrow gaps between concrete, bricks and exposed beams, little patches of sunlit skin shining in the dark. Your mother is here tonight, Marwan, with us, on this cold and moonlit beach, among the crying babies and the women worrying in tongues we don’t speak. Afghans and Somalis and Iraqis and Eritreans and Syrians. All of us impatient for sunrise, all of us in dread of it. All of us in search of home. I have heard it said we are the uninvited. We are the unwelcome. We should take our misfortune elsewhere. But I hear your mother's voice, over the tide, and she whispers in my ear, ‘Oh, but if they saw, my darling. Even half of what you have. If only they saw. They would say kinder things, surely.' In the glow of this three-quarter moon, my boy, your eyelashes like calligraphy, closed in guileless sleep. I said to you, ‘Hold my hand. Nothing bad will happen.' These are only words. A father's tricks. It slays your father, your faith in him. Because all I can think tonight is how deep the sea, and how powerless I am to protect you from it. Pray God steers the vessel true, when the shores slip out of eyeshot and we are in the heaving waters, pitching and tilting, easily swallowed. Because you, you are precious cargo, Marwan, the most precious there ever was. I pray the sea knows this. Inshallah. How I pray the sea knows this.

Permanent Revolution THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION OPENED up new ways to convert energy and to produce goods, largely liberating humankind from its dependence on the surrounding ecosystem. Humans cut down forests, drained swamps, dammed rivers, flooded plains, laid down hundreds of thousands of miles of railroad tracks, and built skyscraping metropolises. As the world was moulded to fit the needs of Homo sapiens, habitats were destroyed and species went extinct. Our once green and blue planet is becoming a concrete and plastic shopping centre. Today, the earth’s continents are home to billions of Sapiens. If you took all these people and put them on a large set of scales, their combined mass would be about 300 million tons. If you then took all our domesticated farmyard animals – cows, pigs, sheep and chickens – and placed them on an even larger set of scales, their mass would amount to about 700 million tons. In contrast, the combined mass of all surviving large wild animals – from porcupines and penguins to elephants and whales – is less than 100 million tons. Our children’s books, our iconography and our TV screens are still full of giraffes, wolves and chimpanzees, but the real world has very few of them left. There are about 80,000 giraffes in the world, compared to 1.5 billion cattle; only 200,000 wolves, compared to 400 million domesticated dogs; only 250,000 chimpanzees – in contrast to billions of humans. Humankind really has taken over the world.1 Ecological degradation is not the same as resource scarcity. As we saw in the previous chapter, the resources available to humankind are constantly increasing, and are likely to continue to do so. That’s why doomsday prophesies of resource scarcity are probably misplaced. In contrast, the fear of ecological degradation is only too well founded. The future may see Sapiens gaining control of a cornucopia of new materials and energy sources, while simultaneously destroying what remains of the natural habitat and driving most other species to extinction. In fact, ecological turmoil might endanger the survival of Homo sapiens itself. Global warming, rising oceans and widespread pollution could make the earth less hospitable to our kind, and the future might consequently see a spiralling race between human power and human-induced natural disasters. As humans use their power to counter the forces of nature and subjugate the ecosystem to their needs and whims, they might cause more and more unanticipated and dangerous side effects. These are likely to be controllable only by even more drastic manipulations of the ecosystem, which would result in even worse chaos. Many call this process ‘the destruction of nature’. But it’s not really destruction, it’s change. Nature cannot be destroyed. Sixty-five million years ago, an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs, but in so doing opened the way forward for mammals. Today, humankind is driving many species into extinction and might even annihilate itself. But other organisms are doing quite well. Rats and cockroaches, for example, are in their heyday. These tenacious creatures would probably creep out from beneath the smoking rubble of a nuclear Armageddon, ready and able to spread their DNA. Perhaps 65 million years from now, intelligent rats will look back gratefully on the decimation wrought by humankind, just as we today can thank that dinosaur-busting asteroid. Still, the rumours of our own extinction are premature. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world’s human population has burgeoned as never before. In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens.

there was a rumour that the only bearded man safe in Gujarat was then Chief Minister Modi whose police officers were not seen anywhere in the initial days after the Godhra incident as the mayhem spread rapidly.

Rumours are the seeds of legends, light enough to spread on the wind, and quick to grow. By the time a truth has put down its roots, rumours will have blossomed and become their own truths, because even the wildest fantasy has been told by someone, and this - the fact of something being told by someone - gives it a veracity, even if what is told is more than a little unlikely

The only thing Covid-19 shares with false rumour is the speed with which it spreads. And that must have misled people in the beginning, who treated it like rumour.

Oh no, dear, you’re far too lovely for that. You’ll be the kindly one. They’ll be terrified of you because I’ll spread rumours about you having once killed a man with a pen, but you’ll be winsome and agreeable.’ ‘It was a mechanical pencil and he was trying to shoot you.’ ‘Nevertheless, they’ll be adoring but wary.

Because Coronavirus spreads as fast as a rumour, that was why in the beginning, people thought it was a rumour.

According to the official version, he replied, ‘La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas’ (‘The Guard dies, but doesn’t surrender’). Rumour spread, however, that ‘le Mot de Cambronne’ was not meurt, but a different five-letter m-word. A hundred years later, French encyclopedias were still refusing to quote him exactly. 65 ‘A mistake may be admitted after one day,’ it has been said; ‘if delayed, the truth will emerge after one century.’ 66 Bertrand would survive to accompany his master on the second exile. 67 Drouot lived on, and was made famous by his great oration when Napoleon’s remains were interred in Les Invalides in 1840. 68

A duel may be triggered by a seemingly trivial offence. In 1806, the poet Thomas Moore’s Irish blood boiled following a scathing review of his poems by Francis Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review. He challenged Jeffrey to a duel and bought pistols and ammunition in a Bond Street shop. Fortunately the duel (at Chalk Farm) was stopped by some Bow Street Runners. Moore and Jeffrey were arrested and taken before the Bow Street magistrates, and their guns examined. To Moore’s dismay, it was found that his pistol was loaded but Jeffrey’s was not: the ball had fallen out, probably when the duel was interrupted. A rumour spread that both pistols were unloaded, implying that the duellists were cowards; Moore wrote to the newspapers in an attempt to clear his name. Meanwhile, Lord Byron mocked Moore’s ‘leadless pistol’ in his poem English Bards and Scotch Reviewers (1809). Moore sent a challenge to Byron but his lordship had gone abroad. The two poets later became great friends.

As the famine deepened, rumours of cannibalism spread throughout the province. The goverment issued stark warnings about it. We heard that an elderly man had killed a child and put the cooked meat into soup. He sold it at a market canteen, where it was eaten by eager diners. The crime was discovered when police found the bones. I thought these killers must have been psychopaths, and that ordinary people would never resort to such crimes. Now I am not sure. Having spoken to many who came close to death during that time I realize that starvation can drive people to insanity. It can cause parents to take food from their own children, people to eat the corpses of the dead, and the gentlest neighbour to commit murder.

A girl a few feet away suddenly gasped, jumping up and down. “Ohmagod it’s Caleb Altair.” I glanced over my shoulder in the direction she was pointing, pulling away from my friends. Caleb headed a line of Juniors as he strode down the corridor like he owned every ounce of oxygen in it. His friends pointed us out and my gut tightened as his stony gaze slid over us. His fan club were eyeing him hopefully and I knew in the depths of my heart he wasn’t going to pass us by without comment. He slowed his pace, breathing in deeply. “Do you smell that guys?” He sniffed the air and my scowl grew. “Smells like a bunch of Orderless Fae pretending they deserve a place in our prestigious Academy.” “Is it raining assholes today?” Tory commented, turning away from him and for a moment it almost looked like he was going to crack a smile. “I have an Order,” Sofia muttered under her breath but Caleb’s Vampire hearing didn’t let her get away with it. “I wouldn’t go around reminding people of that, blondie. Being a Pegasus is worse than not having an Order.” His friend fist bumped him, nodding his agreement as he laughed. He was a tall guy with red hair and cold eyes. “Yeah I dunno how there are so many of them on campus,” the redhead jibed. “Only a freak would want to screw a horse.” Caleb chuckled at that, nodding firmly. “I think I’d rather give up my claim first.” His shitbag friends laughed their heads off as Caleb swept off down the hall to a stream of excited hoots. “God he’s awful,” I growled. “Ignore him Sofia.” “If I ever bump into him as a Pegasus, I’ll introduce him to my left hoof,” Sofia hissed and I raised my brows at the fire in her eyes. “I would so love to see that,” Tory laughed, then lowered her voice as she looked to me. “I wonder if we can use his Pegasus hate against him?” “Yeah, you should spread a rumour that he likes Pegasus ass,” Sofia whispered, a manic gleam in her eyes. I kinda liked this crazy side to her and couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled from my throat. Diego stared at her in shock, then nodded keenly. “That would be fantastico, Sofia. I doubt anyone would believe us freaks though.” He winked at her and she blushed at his insinuation. (Darcy)

The arch patriarchal and highly illogical rule regarding nudity tells us: men want to see naked women, women do not want to see naked men; men want to show their naked body to women, women do not want to be naked in front of men. The age-old male practice of indecent exposure has been revived on the internet where millions of men shamelessly send images of their genitals to women they have never met and enjoy the idea that women are looking at their penis. When she sees his penis, patriarchal logic dictates, he has power over her. Yet this power also manifests when he sees her naked, for a man who sees a woman naked is able to ruin her life. He can, in certain cultures, wreck her chances of marriage and he can publicly ridicule her so that she is beset by horrific shame. He can spread her image at school, to her colleagues and parents and bring her to the verge of suicide. A woman, on the other hand, has no power over a man she sees naked: the only meagre vengeance she could possibly mete out is to spread the rumour that he has a micro penis. Opening women's changing rooms to anyone who wishes to call themselves a woman changes absolutely nothing in this power dynamic. In the meeting between the post-modern patriarchy and traditional patriarchy, women are left in the firing line with only themselves to rely on to resolve their predicament.

Oh,’ Vigot said, ‘I had to take charge of these on behalf of the American Legation. You know how quickly rumour spreads. There might have been looting. I had all his papers sealed up.’ He said it seriously without even smiling. ‘Anything damaging?’ ‘We can’t afford to find anything damaging against an ally,’ Vigot said.

They were born, they grew up in the gutters, they went to work at twelve, they passed through a brief blossoming-period of beauty and sexual desire, they married at twenty, they were middle-aged at thirty, they died, for the most part, at sixty. Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbours, films, football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult. A few agents of the Thought Police moved always among them, spreading false rumours and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who were judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt was made to indoctrinate them with the ideology of the Party.

He, on top of a hill in Heaven, weeps whenever, outside that state of being called his country, one of his worlds drops dead, vanishes screaming, shrivels, explodes, murders itself. And, when he weeps, Light and His tears glide down together, hand in hand. So, at the beginning of the projected poem, he weeps, and Country Heaven is suddenly dark. Bushes and owls blow out like sparks. And the countrymen of heaven crouch all together under the hedges and, among themselves in the tear-salt darkness, surmise which world, which star, which of their late, turning homes, in the skies has gone for ever. And this time, spreads the heavenly hedgerow rumour, it is the Earth. The Earth has killed itself. It is black petrified, wizened, poisoned, burst, cruel, kind, dumb, afire, loving, dull, shortly and brutishly hunt their days down like enemies on that corrupted face. And, one by one, these heavenly hedgerow-men, who once were of the Earth, tell one another, through the long night, Light and His tears falling, what they remember, what they sense in the submerged wilderness and on the exposed hair's breadth of the mind, what they feel on the trembling on the nerves of a nerve, what they know in their Edenic hearts, of that self-killed place. They remember places, fears, loves, exultation, misery, animal joy, ignorance and mysteries, all we know and do not know. The poem is made of these tellings. And the poem becomes, at last, an affirmation of the beautiful and terrible worth of the Earth.

Rumour spread that the flurry of attractive young women accompanying elderly members to dinner were – horror of horrors – not all married to their hosts, and a sign sprang up: MEMBERS ARE ASKED NOT TO BRING THEIR MISTRESSES TO DINE AT THE CLUB, UNLESS THEY ARE THE WIVES OF OTHER MEMBERS.

Remember, great minds discuss ideas, average minds talk about events, and small minds talk about people. Talking about people involves criticizing, gossiping, or spreading rumours about individuals, often without any constructive purpose or benefit. In contrast, talking about events involves simply recounting what has happened, not necessarily in a way that contributes positively to our lives. On the other hand, focusing on discussing ideas rather than events or people can lead to greater personal and professional success and more meaningful and productive conversations and relationships.

As master of Bag End Frodo felt it his painful duty to say good-bye to the guests. Rumours of strange events had by now spread all over the field, but Frodo would only say no doubt everything will be cleared up in the morning. About midnight carriages came for the important folk. One by one they rolled away, filled with full but very unsatisfied hobbits. Gardeners came by arrangement, and removed in wheelbarrows those that had inadvertently remained behind.

And, as inflation has fallen, so bonds have rallied in what has been one of the great bond bull markets of modern history. Even more remarkably, despite the spectacular Argentine default – not to mention Russia’s in 1998 – the spreads on emerging market bonds have trended steadily downwards, reaching lows in early 2007 that had not been seen since before the First World War, implying an almost unshakeable confidence in the economic future. Rumours of the death of Mr Bond have clearly proved to be exaggerated. Inflation has come down partly because many of the items we buy, from clothes to computers, have got cheaper as a result of technological innovation and the relocation of production to low-wage economies in Asia. It has also been reduced because of a worldwide transformation in monetary policy, which began with the monetarist-inspired increases in short-term rates implemented by the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and continued with the spread of central bank independence and explicit targets in the 1990s. Just as importantly, as the Argentine case shows, some of the structural drivers of inflation have also weakened. Trade unions have become less powerful. Loss-making state industries have been privatized. But, perhaps most importantly of all, the social constituency with an interest in positive real returns on bonds has grown. In the developed world a rising share of wealth is held in the form of private pension funds and other savings institutions that are required, or at least expected, to hold a high proportion of their assets in the form of government bonds and other fixed income securities. In 2007 a survey of pension funds in eleven major economies revealed that bonds accounted for more than a quarter of their assets, substantially lower than in past decades, but still a substantial share.71 With every passing year, the proportion of the population living off the income from such funds goes up, as the share of retirees increases.

The whole Lincolnshire Rising was sparked off when rumours spread that Commissioners were coming to take away all of the Church plate, paid for by the offerings of the parish over decades, and give it to the King.

Rumours filled the lives of all inhabitants,’ recalled a resident of Petrograd. ‘They were believed more readily than the newspapers, which were censored. The public was desperate for information, for almost anything, on political subjects, and any rumour about the war or German intrigues was bound to spread like wildfire.’5 What gave these stories their revolutionary power and significance was how far they accorded with the ‘general mood’ (and with previous rumours that had shaped that mood). Once a rumour, however false, became the subject of common belief, it assumed the status of a political fact, informing the attitudes and actions of the public. All revolutions are based in part on myth.

Research shows that women with psychopathy are much more likely to engage in relational aggression (spreading rumours, exclusion, mean comments), while men with psychopathy are much more likely to be physically aggressive.

All right, then… Captain Black,” she said with a tiny bow. “I’ll do what I can to spread words of your newfound bravery and appetite for cruelty around the crew. It’s the least I can do.” Jon dropped his smile and walked quickly up to her, his face set in deadly seriousness as he stood almost touching her. He looked down into her crystal-blue gaze and could see the tiny tremor in her eyelids. “I don’t trust you,” he said, soft like silk against steel. “Not yet. So I will be watching you, Ceara, and gods help you if I so much as hear a single whispered word to make me doubt your loyalty, you’ll find the truth in those rumours you just offered to spread. Do I make myself clear?

People's tongues spread rumour as if it were the plague.

And if you daren’t go to see Klamm on that kind of subject, maybe you wouldn’t be let in to see him on far more important business, if Klamm is entirely inaccessible—though only to you and your like, because Frieda, for instance, can pop in and see him whenever she wants—well, if that’s the case, you still can find out, you’d think you only had to wait. Klamm wouldn’t allow such a false rumour to circulate for long, he really likes to know what’s said about him in the bar and the guest-rooms, all that is very important to him, and if it’s false he’ll soon put it right. But he hasn’t put it right, so people think there’s nothing to put right and it is the truth. What you see is only Frieda taking the beer to Klamm’s room and coming out again with the payment, but Frieda tells you what you haven’t seen, and you have to believe her. Although in fact she doesn’t tell you, she wouldn’t reveal such mysteries, no, the secrets spread of their own accord around her, and once they’ve spread she doesn’t shrink from speaking of them herself, but in a modest way, without claiming anything, just referring to what’s common knowledge.

Among the most vocal part of the press spreading rumours about its negative effects were the outlets owned by William Randolph Hearst, a media tycoon who had invested heavily in the wood pulp industry. Since hemp paper posed direct competition to wood pulp paper, he had an economic stake in limiting hemp production, and recognised that if controls were placed on cannabis because of its psychoactive effects, it would become more difficult to grow the plant for other purposes. Hearst’s media empire spread stories about violent attacks on white women by Mexican immigrants intoxicated with marijuana, creating a sense of moral panic and support for controls on the drug, and therefore on the plant as well.