Some words of wisdom on the subject of lying by writers, philosophers and other other notable people.
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
“Just because something isn’t a lie does not mean that it isn’t deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.”
― Criss Jami
“When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.”
― Yevgeny Yevtushenko
“No one believes a liar. Even when she’s telling the truth.”
― Sara Shepard, Heartless
“Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul.”
― Patricia Briggs, Moon Called
“People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
“Stop lying to yourself. When we deny our own truth, we deny our own potential.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
“Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.”
― Dorothy Allison
“The truly scary thing about undiscovered lies is that they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones. They erode our strength, our self-esteem, our very foundation.”
― Cheryl Hughes
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
― Abraham Lincoln
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain
There are some good people. But a good chunk of them will lie for no reason at all – it’ll be ten o’clock and they’ll tell you it’s nine. You’re looking at the clock and you can’t even fathom why they’re lying. They just lie because that’s what they do.
― John Cusack
“The secret is to know how to lie” he used to say, ” and to know when someone’s lying to you”. His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.”
― Nicholas Sparks
“I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It’s how rats are. It’s what makes them rats. But a human doesn’t run and hide in dark places, because he’s something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.”
― Nancy Farmer
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
― Abraham Lincoln
“If you don’t want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.”
― Bruce Lee
“There is beauty in truth, even if it’s painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don’t teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one’s character, one’s mind, one’s heart or one’s soul.”
― José N. Harris
“It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.”
― George Washington
“Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they’re honest about everything.”
― Chuck Klosterman
“We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.”
― Eric Hoffer
I’m a story teller.
I think my boyfriend is telling me great big juicey lies. His stories sound so far fetched and so far out into left field somewhere.