Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Szilard, Leo

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

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

Antrim, Minna

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

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

Proverb, Russian

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

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

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

Merlin

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

Aristotle

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

Watt, James

10.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

11.

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

Simon, Paul

12.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

13.

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

14.

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

Twain, Mark

15.

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''

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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.

19.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

20.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

21.

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

Crowley, Aleister

22.

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

Talmud, The

23.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

24.

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

Steiner, George

25.

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

Greene, Graham

26.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

27.

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

Kant, Immanuel

28.

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

Voltaire

29.

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

Proust, Marcel

30.

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

Mencken, H. L.

31.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

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

33.

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

Armstrong, Robert

34.

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

Byron, Lord

35.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

Szilard, Leo

37.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

38.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

39.

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

40.

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

41.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

42.

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.

43.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

44.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

Miller, Henry

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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