Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Proust, Marcel

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

1.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

2.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

3.

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

Thatcher, Margaret

4.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

5.

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.

6.

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

Canetti, Elias

7.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

8.

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

9.

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

Twain, Mark

10.

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

Mcilvanney, William

11.

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

Proust, Marcel

12.

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

Proust, Marcel

13.

Never forget that a half truth is a whole lie.

14.

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

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

17.

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

18.

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

Watt, James

19.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

20.

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

Phaedrus

21.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

22.

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

Epictetus

23.

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

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

Steiner, George

26.

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

Greene, Graham

27.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

28.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

29.

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

Greene, Graham

30.

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

Crowley, Aleister

31.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

32.

Telling lies is a fault in a boy, an art in a lover, an accomplishment in a bachelor, and second-nature in a married man.

Rowland, Helen

33.

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

34.

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.

35.

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Soderbergh, Steven

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Armstrong, Robert

39.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

40.

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

Aristotle

41.

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

42.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

43.

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

44.

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

45.

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

Byron, Lord

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Merlin

49.

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

Frost, Robert

50.

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