Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Armstrong, Robert

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

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

Kant, Immanuel

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

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.

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

Aristotle

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

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

Speakes, Larry

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

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

10.

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

Crowley, Aleister

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Haig, Alexander

14.

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

Armstrong, Robert

15.

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.

16.

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

Epictetus

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.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

21.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

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

Mencken, H. L.

23.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

24.

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

25.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

26.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

27.

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

28.

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

Phaedrus

29.

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

Watt, James

30.

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

31.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

32.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

33.

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

Talmud, The

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

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

36.

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

37.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

38.

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

39.

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

Antrim, Minna

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.

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

Thirkell, Angela

42.

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

Zohar

43.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

44.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

45.

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

Mcilvanney, William

46.

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

South, Bishop Robert

47.

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

Voltaire

48.

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

Proust, Marcel

49.

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

50.

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

Canetti, Elias