Rumors generally grow deformed as they travel.

Even the absurdest report may in nearly every instance be traced to an actual occurrence; and had there been no such actual occurrence, this preposterous misrepresentation of it would never have existed. Though the distorted or magnified image transmitted to us through the refracting medium of rumour, is utterly unlike the reality; yet in the absence of the reality there would have been no distorted or magnified image.

HERBERT SPENCER, First Principles

There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

Rumors are like ripples in a cornfield. They are ephemeral, but they do indicate which way the wind is blowing.

SUSAN J. PALMER, Aliens Adored

Rumors are seen as crimes committed by third parties. They are perfect crimes and leave not the slightest trace and require no weapons whatsoever--the defense is left without a leg to stand on.

JEAN-NOEL KAPFERER, Rumors: Uses, Interpretations, and Images

Those who feed on rumors are small, suspicious souls.

CHARLES R. SWINDOLL, Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life

Yet rumors are also impervious to verification, for once verified, rumors cease to be so; they are epistomologically empty. It is for this reason that they tend to be regarded as a kind of subterranean discourse. Like gossip, rumors present one with the possibility of understanding everything without making the thing one's own. By divorcing understanding from ownership, rumors are ineluctably public, condemned to promiscuous circulation (because, again, a rumor ceases to be a rumor once it drops out of circulation) and a kind of illegitimate historicality. Rumors constitute the "noise" between those events destined for memorialization.

VICENTE L. RAFAEL, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History

Rumors are mostly a projection of the individual who started them.

ROYA R. RAD, Therapy Dialogue

Rumors are like songbirds; they sound filling but make a poor feast.

W. MICHAEL GEAR & KATHLEEN O'NEAL GEAR, People of the Nightland

Some rumors are entirely true. Others contain grains of truth; still others contain none at all. Plausible or implausible, truthful or false, rumors circulate because people are trying to get to the bottom of a matter. The acceptance or rejection of a given rumor in a given time or place depends on its ability to satisfy this need to understand.

KSENIJA BILBIJA, The Art of Truth-telling about Authoritarian Rule

Buy the rumor, sell the fact.

BOB WISNER, Farmer's Digest, 1976

Rumors are transmitted because they are surprising, funny, or shocking, and the teller wishes to entertain the listeners. Similar to the telling of a joke, the passing of a rumor provides entertainment and prestige. That is why urban legends last so long: they are savoured at the end of a meal, or in a bar while sipping on an after-dinner drink; they provide a certain momentary pleasure in consuming.

GAIL DE VOS, Tales, Rumors, and Gossip

Rumors are the oldest form of mass media.

JEAN-NOEL KAPFERER, Rumors: Uses, Interpretations, and Images

You know what rumors are like--like a jar full of moths. Once they escape, they're all over the place.

RHYS BOWEN, Oh Danny Boy

Rumors are like a flame blown by the wind.

NELLIE MAE BATSON, Skeet Apples

Rumors are a kind of exhalation or intellectual perfume thrown off by the news of the day. Some events are more aromatic than others; they can be detected by the trained pointer long before they happen. When things are going on that have a strong vibration--what foreign correspondents love to call a "repercussion"--they cause a good deal of mind-quaking. An event getting ready to happen is one of the most interesting things to watch. By a sort of mental radiation it fills men's minds with surmises and conjectures. Curiously enough, due perhaps to the innate perversity of man, most of the rumors suggest the exact opposite of what is going to happen.

CHRISTOPHER MORLEY, Mince Pie

Rumors are not news; but they sometimes foreshadow news.

ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT, The Outlook, Sep. 15, 1915

Rumors are nearly as old as human history, but with the rise of the Internet, they have become ubiquitous. In fact we are now awash in them. False rumors are especially troublesome; they impose real damage on individuals and institutions, and they often resist correction. They can threaten careers, policies, public officials, and sometimes even democracy itself.

CASS R. SUNSTEIN, On Rumors

Old rumors never die; nor do they fade away. They simply lay dormant for a while until the next appropriate time appears.

TERRY ANN KNOPF, Rumors, Race, and Riots

Rumors are like lightning on summer tinder, producing flames that dance in flickering brilliance from person to person, sometimes flaring in great conflagrations of exaggeration before finally extinguishing themselves in the cold waters of fact.

STEPHEN LEIGH, Speaking Stones

[Rumors are a] vehicle for anxieties and aspirations that may not be openly expressed.

JAMES SCOTT, "Extravagant Expectations of Freedom"

Rumors are often recycled. People rely on those narrative templates that have proved to be plausible and durable in the past. Rumors appear, are spread, and then disappear--ignored--until similar circumstances make the stories appropriate once again.

GARY ALAN FINE & BILL ELLIS, The Global Grapevine

Rumors are hearsay; they are told, believed, and passed on not because of the weight of evidence but because of the expectations by tellers that they are true in the first place.

ERICH GOODE & NACHMAN BEN-YEHUDA, Moral Panics

We may view [rumors] as manipulative machinations of power, taking advantage of products of popular culture, or instead we may consider them as subversive operations undermining power structures, drawing their energy from the vitality of popular or rather folk culture.

GARY ALAN FINE, Rumor Mills

Rumors are like wildfire; you are burned up before you know it.

KENNETH D. MCLLROY, The Pragmatic Leader

Where the public wants to understand but does not receive any official answers, there are rumors. Rumors are the black market of information.

MARK SCHINDLER, Rumors in Financial Markets

People who spread rumors are like walking infections. The lying words from their mouths spread like disease from person to person. The only way to stop the disease is to keep your mouth shut.

JOYCE HANSEN, One True Friend