Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

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

Feather, William

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

Homer

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

Thatcher, Margaret

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

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

Mencken, H. L.

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

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

10.

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

Greene, Graham

11.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

12.

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

13.

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

Voltaire

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

Speakes, Larry

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

Watt, James

19.

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

South, Bishop Robert

20.

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

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

22.

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

Simon, Paul

23.

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

Steiner, George

24.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

25.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

26.

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

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Phaedrus

28.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

29.

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

Talmud, The

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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.

33.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

34.

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

Thirkell, Angela

35.

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

36.

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

Proust, Marcel

37.

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

38.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

39.

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

Proust, Marcel

40.

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

Merlin

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

Kant, Immanuel

45.

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

Antrim, Minna

46.

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