Lies Quotes

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.

So you're always honest," I said.
"Aren't you?"
"No," I told him. "I'm not."
"Well, that's good to know, I guess."
"I'm not saying I'm a liar," I told him. He raised his eyebrows. "That's not how I meant it, anyways."
"How'd you mean it, then?"
"I just...I don't always say what I feel."
"Why not?"
"Because the truth sometimes hurts," I said.
"Yeah," he said. "So do lies, though.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need...
fantasies
to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE
LITTLE
LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN
SHOW
ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME
RIGHTNESS
IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have
got
to believe that, or what's the
point
—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.

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.

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth.

Lies require commitment.

Lies and secrets, Tessa, they are like a cancer in the soul. They eat away what is good and leave only destruction behind.

When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.

Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.

Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.

The best lies about me are the ones
I
told.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.

Love is a verb, not a noun. It is active. Love is not just feelings of passion and romance. It is behavior. If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship. The words I love you are not enough to make up for that. Don’t kid yourself that they are.

Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.

Nothing is ever certain.

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no fibs.

Why aren't you in school? I see you every day wandering around."
"Oh, they don't miss me," she said. "I'm antisocial, they say. I don't mix. It's so strange. I'm very social indeed. It all depends on what you mean by social, doesn't it? Social to me means talking to you about things like this." She rattled some chestnuts that had fallen off the tree in the front yard. "Or talking about how strange the world is. Being with people is nice. But I don't think it's social to get a bunch of people together and then not let them talk, do you? An hour of TV class, an hour of basketball or baseball or running, another hour of transcription history or painting pictures, and more sports, but do you know, we never ask questions, or at least most don't; they just run the answers at you, bing, bing, bing, and us sitting there for four more hours of film-teacher. That's not social to me at all. It's a lot of funnels and lot of water poured down the spout and out the bottom, and them telling us it's wine when it's not. They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker place with the big steel ball. Or go out in the cars and race on the streets, trying to see how close you can get to lampposts, playing 'chicken' and 'knock hubcaps.' I guess I'm everything they say I am, all right. I haven't any friends. That's supposed to prove I'm abnormal. But everyone I know is either shouting or dancing around like wild or beating up one another. Do you notice how people hurt each other nowadays?

Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is.

Knowing can be a curse on a person's life. I'd traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn't know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can't ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.

It [feminism] is mixed up with a muddled idea that women are free when they serve their employers but slaves when they help their husbands.

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.

Lying is done with words, and also with silence.

I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out upon my face.

Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.

The only thing more frustrating than slanderers is those foolish enough to listen to them.

There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.

The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject... And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them... Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced.

Always sleep with one eye open. Never take anything for granted. Your best friends might just be your enemies.

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

When it comes to controlling human beings there is no better instrument than lies. Because, you see, humans live by beliefs. And beliefs can be manipulated. The power to manipulate beliefs is the only thing that counts.

Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.

We met less than a week ago and in that time I've done nothing but lie and cheat and betray you. I know. But if you give me a chance...all I want is to protect you. To be near you. For as long as I'm able.

If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.

The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.

MAKING THE LIE MAKE SENSE:
When denial (his or ours) can no longer hold and we finally have to admit to ourselves that we’ve been lied to, we search frantically for ways to keep it from disrupting our lives. So we rationalize. We find good reasons to justify his lying, just as he almost always accompanies his confessions with good reasons for his lies. He tells us he only lied because…. We tell ourselves he only lied because…. We make excuses for him: The lying wasn’t significant/Everybody lies/He’s only human/I have no right to judge him.
Allowing the lies to register in our consciousness means having to make room for any number of frightening possibilities:
• He’s not the man I thought he was.
• The relationship has spun out of control and I don’t know
what to do
• The relationship may be over.
Most women will do almost anything to avoid having to face these truths. Even if we yell and scream at him when we discover that he’s lied to us, once the dust settles, most of us will opt for the comforting territory of rationalization. In fact, many of us are willing to rewire our senses, short-circuit our instincts and intelligence, and accept the seductive comfort of self-delusion.

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons.
- Mr. Penderwick

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
[Commencement Address at Yale University, June 11 1962]