Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Talmud, The

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Talmud, The

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

Aristotle

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

South, Bishop Robert

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

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

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

There is no lie that a man will not believe; and there is no man who does not believe many lies; and there is no man who believes only lies.

Sterling, John

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

Watt, James

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

10.

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

Armstrong, Robert

11.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

12.

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

Williams, Tennessee

13.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

14.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

15.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

16.

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.

17.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

18.

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

Haig, Alexander

19.

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

Simon, Paul

20.

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.

21.

Liars are the cause of all the sins and crimes in the world.

Epictetus

22.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

23.

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

24.

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

Szilard, Leo

25.

The middle of the road is where the white line is -- and that's the worst place to drive.

Frost, Robert

26.

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

27.

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

Proust, Marcel

28.

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

29.

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

Twain, Mark

30.

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

31.

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

Zohar

32.

No man lies so boldly as the man who is indignant.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

Thirkell, Angela

34.

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

Voltaire

35.

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.

36.

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.

37.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Mencken, H. L.

39.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

40.

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

Twain, Mark

41.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

42.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

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

44.

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

Phaedrus

45.

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

46.

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

47.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

48.

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

Twain, Mark

49.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

50.

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