Social Engineering Quotes

Legislating morality grows big government immensely, and helps fashion the noose the government will use to ultimately hang you by.

~ A.e. Samaan

Suicide creates his own society: to shut yourself off from other people in some dingy, rented box and stare, like Melville's Bartleby, day in and day out at the dead wall outside your window is in itself a rejection of the world which is said to be rejecting you. It is a way of saying, like Bartleby, 'I prefer not to' to every offer and every possibility, which is a condition no amount of social engineering will cure.

~ Al Álvarez

Liberals tend to view traditions, policies, and morals of past generations as arbitrary designs put in place by less enlightened people. Because of this, liberals don't pay much attention to why traditions developed or wonder about possible ramifications of their social engineering.

~ John Hawkins

There is a very dangerous myth that #Hitler was solely fueled by racism. His desire to engineer society was pervasive. Racism alone cannot explain what happened in The Holocaust without also addressing Hitler's statist policies.

~ A.e. Samaan

Big Government' is a lot less like a 'Big Brother', and a lot more like a mother-in-law.

~ A.e. Samaan

When I work with experimental gadgets, like new variations on virtual reality, in a lab environment, I am always reminded of how small changes in the details of a digital design can have profound unforeseen effects on the experiences of the humans who are playing with it. The slightest change in something as seemingly trivial as the use of a button can sometimes completely alter behavior patterns.For instance, Stanford University researcher Jeremy Bailenson has demonstrated that changing the height of one's avatar in immersive virtual reality transforms self-esteem and social self-perception. Technologies are extensions of ourselves, and, like the avatars in Jeremy's lab, our identities can be shifted by the quirks of gadgets. It is impossible to work with information technology without also engaging in social engineering.

~ Jaron Lanier

The appeal by twentieth-century pluralists to scientific method was also ideologically—and even messianically—driven. It ignored scientific data that interfered with environmentalist assumptions and misrepresented socialist faith as “scientific planning.

~ Paul Edward Gottfried

He informed Byrdie that his social engineering ambitions betrayed all the delusions of grandeur that you might expect from the son of a poet.

~ Nell Zink

I don’t care how secure you think your organization is, I’ll social engineer my way inside in less than 24 hours regardless of the sophistication of your IoT microcosm security. Whatever obstacles I run into exploiting your technical vulnerabilities will be made up for by exploiting the vulnerabilities in the cyber hygiene of your staff.

~ James Scott