Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Aristotle

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

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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

Mcilvanney, William

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.

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

Homer

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won t.

Twain, Mark

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

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

Mencken, H. L.

10.

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.

11.

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

12.

When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! the next day it is as healthy as ever.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

13.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

14.

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.

15.

By a lie, a man...annihilates his dignity as a man.

Kant, Immanuel

16.

Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

Crowley, Aleister

17.

He entered the territory of lies without a passport for return.

Greene, Graham

18.

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

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

21.

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

22.

The middle of the road is where the white line is -- and that's the worst place to drive.

Frost, Robert

23.

No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

26.

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

27.

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

28.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

29.

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

Szilard, Leo

30.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Greene, Graham

33.

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.

Merlin

34.

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

South, Bishop Robert

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically -- for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist -- but then what isn t?

Crisp, Quentin

38.

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

Talmud, The

39.

It contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth.

Armstrong, Robert

40.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

41.

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

Wilde, Oscar

42.

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

Thirkell, Angela

43.

If you wish to strengthen a lie, mix a little truth in with it.

Zohar

44.

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

Phaedrus

45.

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.