Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

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

Dunne, Finley Peter

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

Zohar

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

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

Twain, Mark

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

Voltaire

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

Crowley, Aleister

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

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

Thatcher, Margaret

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

Merlin

10.

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

11.

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

Proverb, Russian

12.

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

Belloc, Hilaire

13.

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

14.

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

Bowen, Elizabeth

15.

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

Proust, Marcel

16.

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

17.

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

Speakes, Larry

18.

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

Mcilvanney, William

19.

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

Antrim, Minna

20.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

21.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

22.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

23.

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

Byron, Lord

24.

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

Kant, Immanuel

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.

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

27.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

Dostoevsky, Fyodor

30.

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

Aristotle

31.

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

Haig, Alexander

32.

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

33.

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

Greene, Graham

34.

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

35.

The lie is a condition of life.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

36.

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

37.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

38.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Churchill, Winston

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.

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.

41.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

42.

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

South, Bishop Robert

43.

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

44.

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

Phaedrus

45.

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.

46.

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''

47.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

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

Feather, William

49.

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