Motivational Quotes

Lies and lying

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Lies and lying

Lying and stealing are next door neighbors.

Proverb, Arabian

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

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

Steiner, George

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

Aristotle

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

Frost, Robert

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

Proust, Marcel

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

Twain, Mark

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

Szilard, Leo

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

Watt, James

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.

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

12.

A liar is full of oaths.

Corneille, Pierre

13.

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

Greene, Graham

14.

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

Mencken, H. L.

15.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

16.

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

Mcilvanney, William

17.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

18.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

19.

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

20.

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

Kant, Immanuel

21.

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

Thirkell, Angela

22.

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

23.

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

Crowley, Aleister

24.

Great talker, great liar.

Proverb, French

25.

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.

26.

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.

27.

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

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

28.

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

29.

When the world has got hold of a lie, it is astonishing how hard it is to kill it. You beat it over the head, till it seems to have given up the ghost, and behold! the next day it is as healthy as ever.

Bulwer-Lytton, Edward G.

30.

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

31.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

32.

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

33.

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

Voltaire

34.

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''

35.

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

36.

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

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander

37.

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

Proust, Marcel

38.

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

39.

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

Williams, Tennessee

40.

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

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

41.

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.

42.

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

Armstrong, Robert

43.

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

Talmud, The

44.

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

Haig, Alexander

45.

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

Phaedrus

46.

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

47.

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

Merlin

48.

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

Epictetus

49.

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

50.

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.