Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

- Cicero, Marcus T.

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

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

Speakes, Larry

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

Aristotle

When lying, be emphatic and indignant, thus behaving like your children.

Feather, William

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

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

A lie with a purpose is one of the worst kind, and the most profitable.

Dunne, Finley Peter

All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.

Simon, Paul

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

10.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

11.

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

Crowley, Aleister

12.

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

13.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

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.

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

Canetti, Elias

16.

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

Szilard, Leo

17.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

18.

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

Williams, Tennessee

19.

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

Proust, Marcel

20.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

With lies you may go ahead in the world, but you can never go back.

Proverb, Russian

25.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

Rowland, Helen

26.

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

27.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

28.

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

Steiner, George

29.

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.

30.

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

Watt, James

31.

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

32.

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

Kant, Immanuel

33.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.

Belloc, Hilaire

34.

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

35.

A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.

Twain, Mark

36.

That's not a lie, it's a terminological inexactitude. Also, a tactical misrepresentation.

Haig, Alexander

37.

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

Talmud, The

38.

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

Zohar

39.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

40.

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

Greene, Graham

41.

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

Frost, Robert

42.

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

43.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

44.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

45.

To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

Plato

46.

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

47.

I do myself a greater injury in lying that I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

48.

There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.

Sterling, John

49.

The difference between a saint and a hypocrite is that one lies for his religion, the other by it.

Antrim, Minna

50.

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