Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Canetti, Elias

Pain forces even the innocent to lie.

Syrus, Publilius

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

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

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

Proust, Marcel

Liars need to have good memories.

Sidney, Algernon

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.

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

Feather, William

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

Merlin

10.

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

Twain, Mark

11.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

12.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

13.

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

Zohar

14.

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

15.

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

Antrim, Minna

16.

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

Ruskin, John

17.

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

Szilard, Leo

18.

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

19.

I am a lie who always speaks the truth.

Cocteau, Jean

20.

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie.

Montague, C. E.

21.

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

Crowley, Aleister

22.

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

Steiner, George

23.

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

24.

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

Aristotle

25.

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

26.

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''

27.

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

28.

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

Homer

29.

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

Mencken, H. L.

30.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

31.

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

32.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

33.

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

34.

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

Mcilvanney, William

35.

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

Proverb, Russian

36.

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.

France, Anatole

37.

Lying is an indispensable part of making life tolerable.

Evans

38.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

39.

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

40.

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

Phaedrus

41.

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

42.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

43.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.

Hoffer, Eric

44.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

Byron, Lord

48.

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.

49.

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

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