Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

- Aristotle

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

The truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.

Mencken, H. L.

Don't lie if you don't have to.

Szilard, Leo

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

Twain, Mark

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

I detest the man who hides one thing in the depth of his heart and speaks forth another.

Homer

If a lie is repeated often enough all the dumb jackasses in the world not only get to believe it, they even swear by it.

Franklin, Billy Boy

Some lies are so well disguised to resemble truth, that we should be poor judges of the truth not to believe them.

Lying is not only excusable; it is not only innocent; it is, above all, necessary and unavoidable. Without the ameliorations that it offers, life would become a mere syllogism and hence too metallic to be borne.

Mencken, H. L.

10.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

Aristotle

11.

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity, do not easily resume life.

Steiner, George

12.

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

13.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

14.

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

15.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

16.

Where lies are easily admitted, the father of lies is not easily kept out. Source unknown A great leader molds public opinion, a wise leader listens to it.

17.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

18.

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time till at length it becomes habitual.

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

20.

Someone who always has to lie discovers that every one of his lies is true.

Canetti, Elias

21.

What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!

Bernanos, Georges

22.

Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forbearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that -- being what it is -- it falls so short of in fact and in deed.

Luce, Clare Boothe

23.

A lie can run around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Watt, James

24.

I would dodge, not lie, in the national interest.

Speakes, Larry

25.

If one cannot invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth.

Thirkell, Angela

26.

If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.

Paige, Leroy ''Satchel''

27.

Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth.

Phaedrus

28.

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

Ruskin, John

29.

Never to lie is to have no lock to your door, you are never wholly alone.

Bowen, Elizabeth

30.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

31.

Never chase a lie. Let it alone, and it will run itself to death. I can work out a good character much faster than anyone can lie me out of it

Beecher, Lyman

32.

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth. Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality. Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself, so the weary travelers may find repose.

Milosz, Ceslaw

34.

In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

35.

Burning lies led to my silent cries Keeping it inside I've got everything to hide. lustful desire, a burning fire You are the flame, You are to blame. Beautiful light deliver me from fright dreams full of lust. Or is the dream dreaming us? PHYSICAL PAIN don't call me insane. I don't want to be dead but all beautiful colors bleed to red

36.

When you rationalize, you do just that. You make rational lies.

37.

Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.

Mailer, Norman

38.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Churchill, Winston

39.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Miller, Henry

40.

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

Mcilvanney, William

41.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

42.

Truth will lose its credit, if delivered by a person that has none.

South, Bishop Robert

43.

This is the punishment of a liar: he is not believed, even when he speaks the truth.

Talmud, The

44.

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

45.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

46.

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death's the other.

Williams, Tennessee

47.

Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.

Proust, Marcel

48.

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.

Montague, C. E.

49.

I should like to lie at your feet and die in your arms.

Voltaire

50.

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

Thatcher, Margaret