Quotes About Snake Oil

#1. Hezekiah Pendergast," Constance continued, "was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius - and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own 'medicine': Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative.

Douglas Preston

#2. The Bible is still the only dirty book I've ever read, at least in its current incarnation as a weapon of the homophobes. Bible scholarship keeps trying to catch up, proving that all the hatred of gay is just stupid translation, though the snake-oil preachers don't want to hear it.

Paul Monette

#3. I think attempting to sell people an easy fix for pain is the worst kind of snake oil.

Brene Brown

#4. The shamans are forever yacking about their snake oil miracles. I prefer the real McCoy, a pregnant woman.

Robert A. Heinlein

#5. Coelho is, of course, entitled to his dumb opinion, just as I am entitled to think Coelho's work is a nauseous broth of egomania and snake-oil mysticism with slightly less intellect, empathy and verbal dexterity than the week-old camembert I threw out yesterday.

Stuart Kelly

#6. I think there's a point to regulating, because there are snake oil companies.

Anne Wojcicki

#7. Some of them wanted to sell me snake oil and I'm not necessarily going to dismiss all of these, as I have never found a rusty snake.

Terry Pratchett

#8. People will buy snake oil from anybody who seems to be selling it in a persuasive way.

Frederick Buechner

#9. Don't waste time worrying about work/life balance, or looking for your best self, sham "secrets" or any other snake oil being pushed by sloppy hippies who have never built a business, let alone a bankroll, or you will wake up 20 years from now poor, pissed off and primed for a midlife crisis.

Ari Gold

#10. In the middle ages, people took potions for their ailments. In the 19th century they took snake oil. Citizens of today's shiny, technological age are too modern for that. They take antioxidants and extract of cactus instead.

Charles Krauthammer

#11. Throughout the '90s and early 2000s, our financial industry and governments leaned on a snake-oil mirage of wealth creation, a bubble predicated on the obvious falsehood that things could only get better.

Nick Harkaway

#12. These global warming studies [are] a bunch of snake oil science.

Sarah Palin

#13. Don King is the best snake oil salesman I ever met. The absolute best.

Mickey Duff

#14. I'm a snake oil salesman as much as anyone else, but I try to keep something for myself.

Freedy Johnston

#15. Python - why settle for snake oil when you can have the whole snake?

Mark Jackson

#16. I couldn't put my finger on one reason why we broke up. It was time, and we were spreading out. They were spreading out more than I was. I would've stayed with the band.

Ringo Starr

#17. I smiled then - a big, toothy idiotic smile - and Serena didn't see it. Her eyes were closed, which was good, because I was turning into one big vagina.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#18. Writing a book is the most difficult, anxiety-prone aspect of my life because the words that I put on paper are very serious to me.

Frank Luntz

#19. I don't ever have the pressure of making a hit, because I've never had a hit song, per se. The closest thing to a hit song was 'Shiraz,' and it's not your prototypical hit song, with a catchy hook and all this other stuff.

Action Bronson

#20. Many may have stopped believing in you, but God hasn't.

Anita R. Sneed-Carter

#21. It's not surprising that truly humanitarian manifestos originate frequently in minority circles or with people whose consciences are troubled by the problems of minorities.

Naguib Mahfouz

#22. Risk something or forever sit with your dreams.

Herb Brooks

#23. Ladies and gentlemen, attention, please!
Come in close where everyone can see!
I got a tale to tell, it isn't gonna cost a dime!
(And if you believe that,
we're gonna get along just fine.)

Stephen King

#24. I call this building an adaptive organization, one that automatically adjusts its process and performance to current conditions.

Eric Ries

#25. God honors a beautiful blend of gift and grit! He gives the gift, and He expects us to have the grit to practice and learn how to use it effectively.

Beth Moore