Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

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

Haig, Alexander

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

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

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

Crowley, Aleister

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

Watt, James

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.

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

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

Steiner, George

10.

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

Canetti, Elias

11.

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

12.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

13.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

14.

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

15.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

16.

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

17.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

18.

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

Aristotle

19.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

20.

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

Armstrong, Robert

21.

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

Antrim, Minna

22.

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

Williams, Tennessee

23.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

24.

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.

25.

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

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

28.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

29.

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

Feather, William

30.

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

Proust, Marcel

31.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

35.

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

36.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

37.

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

38.

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

Mencken, H. L.

39.

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

Speakes, Larry

40.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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

43.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

44.

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

Szilard, Leo

45.

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

Proverb, Russian

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