Wit & Attitude Quote by Randall Terry

Built like a moral boomerang, this line makes betrayal bounce back onto the listener. The first half hands out clean blame: you got played, the other person owns it. The second half yanks the comfort away. If the same trick works twice, the quote argues, the real scandal is your willingness to keep renting out your trust to the same bad actor.

That turn is why it works. It isn’t just a warning about gullibility; it’s a compact theory of power. The scammer succeeds once through deception, but succeeds again through your hope, ego, or denial. The subtext is harshly American: personal responsibility isn’t optional, even when someone else behaved badly. There’s also an implicit demand for boundaries. Compassion without memory becomes complicity; forgiveness without changed behavior becomes self-harm.

As a celebrity aphorism (and a well-traveled proverb long before any modern attribution), it thrives because it’s instantly usable: a caption for a breakup, a mantra after a political disappointment, a mic-drop after a workplace betrayal. Its rhetorical rhythm does the heavy lifting: the mirrored “fool me” sets up symmetry, then “shame” flips from accusation to self-indictment. That neat flip flatters the speaker as someone who has learned, who won’t be duped again, who can narrate pain as wisdom.

The darker edge: it can become a shield against vulnerability, a preemptive way to blame yourself for being harmed, or to justify hardening into suspicion. The quote’s potency lies in that tension between empowerment and self-reproach.