Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Nietzsche, Friedrich

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Aristotle

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Williams, Tennessee

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

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

Thatcher, Margaret

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

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

Proverb, Russian

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

10.

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

Canetti, Elias

11.

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

Phaedrus

12.

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

Steiner, George

13.

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

Kant, Immanuel

14.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

15.

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

Merlin

16.

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

South, Bishop Robert

17.

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.

18.

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''

19.

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

Crowley, Aleister

20.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

21.

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

Haig, Alexander

22.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

23.

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

Twain, Mark

24.

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

Byron, Lord

25.

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

26.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

27.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

28.

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

29.

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

Speakes, Larry

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Watt, James

34.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

35.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

36.

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

37.

Liars are always ready to take oaths.

Alfieri, Vittorio, Conte Di

38.

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

39.

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.

40.

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

Homer

41.

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

Feather, William

42.

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

Antrim, Minna

43.

In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.

Greene, Graham

44.

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

Mcilvanney, William

45.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

46.

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

Szilard, Leo

47.

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

48.

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

Thirkell, Angela

49.

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

Simon, Paul

50.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.