Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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.

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Canetti, Elias

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

Zohar

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

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

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

Speakes, Larry

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

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

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

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.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

12.

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

Szilard, Leo

13.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

14.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

15.

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

Haig, Alexander

16.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

17.

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

Byron, Lord

18.

It is easier to gather up a bag of loose feathers than to round up or head off a single lie.

19.

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

20.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

21.

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

Watt, James

22.

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

Phaedrus

23.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

24.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

25.

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

Twain, Mark

26.

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

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

28.

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

Talmud, The

29.

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

Greene, Graham

30.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

31.

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

Mcilvanney, William

32.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

33.

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

34.

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

Antrim, Minna

35.

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

Williams, Tennessee

36.

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

Simon, Paul

37.

If you do not wish to be lied to, do not ask questions. If there were no questions, there would be no lies.

Traven, B.

38.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

39.

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

40.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

41.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

42.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

43.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

44.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

45.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

46.

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

47.

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

Proverb, Russian

48.

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

49.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

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