Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Feather, William

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Thatcher, Margaret

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

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

Zohar

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Feather, William

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

South, Bishop Robert

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

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

10.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

11.

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

Proust, Marcel

12.

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

Greene, Graham

13.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

14.

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

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Twain, Mark

17.

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

Talmud, The

18.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

19.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

20.

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

Phaedrus

21.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

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

Steiner, George

23.

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

24.

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

Szilard, Leo

25.

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

26.

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

Crowley, Aleister

27.

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

28.

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilized being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

Wilde, Oscar

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

32.

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

33.

One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.

Twain, Mark

34.

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

Twain, Mark

35.

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.

36.

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

Armstrong, Robert

37.

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

38.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

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

40.

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

41.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

42.

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

43.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

44.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

45.

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

Mencken, H. L.

46.

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