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

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

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.

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

Voltaire

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.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

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

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

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

Haig, Alexander

10.

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

Watt, James

11.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

12.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

13.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

14.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

15.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

16.

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

17.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

18.

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

Homer

19.

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

Proust, Marcel

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

22.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

23.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

Burning lies led to my silent cries Keeping it inside I've got everything to hide. lustful desire, a burning fire You are the flame, You are to blame. Beautiful light deliver me from fright dreams full of lust. Or is the dream dreaming us? PHYSICAL PAIN don't call me insane. I don't want to be dead but all beautiful colors bleed to red

25.

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

Proverb, Russian

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Frost, Robert

29.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

30.

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

South, Bishop Robert

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

35.

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

36.

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

Proust, Marcel

37.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

38.

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

Steiner, George

39.

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

Mencken, H. L.

40.

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

41.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

42.

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

Canetti, Elias

43.

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

Speakes, Larry

44.

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

Phaedrus

45.

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

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.

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

48.

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

Crowley, Aleister

49.

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

50.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor