Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Twain, Mark

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

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

Kant, Immanuel

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

Merlin

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''

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

Phaedrus

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

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

Belloc, Hilaire

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

Voltaire

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

10.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

11.

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

12.

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

Greene, Graham

13.

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

Armstrong, Robert

14.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

15.

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

Antrim, Minna

16.

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

Epictetus

17.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

18.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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.

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

21.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

23.

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

Crowley, Aleister

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

Canetti, Elias

26.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

27.

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

Proust, Marcel

28.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

29.

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

Steiner, George

30.

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

Simon, Paul

31.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

32.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

33.

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

Proust, Marcel

34.

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

Szilard, Leo

35.

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

Aristotle

36.

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

Zohar

37.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

38.

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

39.

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

40.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

41.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

42.

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

Watt, James

43.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

44.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

45.

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

46.

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

Byron, Lord

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

50.

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

Twain, Mark