Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Voltaire

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Epictetus

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

Haig, Alexander

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

Voltaire

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

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

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

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

South, Bishop Robert

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Speakes, Larry

10.

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

11.

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

Szilard, Leo

12.

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

Kant, Immanuel

13.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Steiner, George

17.

As one knows the poet by his fine music, so one can recognize the liar by his rich rhythmic utterance, and in neither case will the casual inspiration of the moment suffice. Here, as elsewhere, practice must precede perfection.

Wilde, Oscar

18.

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

19.

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

Crowley, Aleister

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Simon, Paul

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

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

25.

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

Watt, James

26.

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

Zohar

27.

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

28.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

29.

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

Mencken, H. L.

30.

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

31.

A lie can run around the world six times while the truth is still trying to put on its pants.

Twain, Mark

32.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

33.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

34.

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

35.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

38.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

39.

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

Proverb, Russian

40.

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.

41.

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.

42.

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

Homer

43.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

44.

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