The Confidence Men Quotes

“Magic entails both mechanical and psychological engineering, and those arts, along with the contemplative patience and manual dexterity they required,”
― Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History

“How does a master manipulator create and sustain faith? Why do his converts persist in believing things that are patently false?—also”
― Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History

“The term cult is not itself pejorative but simply descriptive,” the American psychologist Margaret Thaler Singer, who spent her career studying cults, has written. “A cultic relationship is one in which a person intentionally induces others to become totally or nearly totally dependent on him or her for almost all major life decisions, and inculcates in these followers a belief that he or she had some special talent, gift, or knowledge.”
― Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History

“Jones would first have to prove the Spook’s fitness as a treasure-hunting guide by having him find something small, much as a devious owner salts a barren mine with gold nuggets before putting it up for”
― Margalit Fox, The Confidence Men: How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History