Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Kant, Immanuel

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

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

Phaedrus

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

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

Thatcher, Margaret

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

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

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

Voltaire

10.

Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.

Proust, Marcel

11.

And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade.

Byron, Lord

12.

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.

13.

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

Watt, James

14.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

15.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

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

Haig, Alexander

17.

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

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

Szilard, Leo

20.

Don't join the book burners. Do not think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

21.

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

Thirkell, Angela

22.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

23.

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

Mcilvanney, William

24.

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

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

27.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

28.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

29.

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

Kant, Immanuel

30.

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

Greene, Graham

31.

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''

32.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

33.

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

34.

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

35.

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

Canetti, Elias

36.

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

Mencken, H. L.

37.

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

38.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

39.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

40.

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

41.

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

Feather, William

42.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

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.

46.

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

Proust, Marcel

47.

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.

48.

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

Proverb, Russian

49.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

50.

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

Crowley, Aleister