lying quotes

Abraham Lincoln (attributed): 

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.

Adrienne Rich: 

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

Anonymous: 

A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble. (a combination of Proverbs 12:22 and Psalms 46:1)

Benjamin Disraeli: 

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. [attributed, perhaps incorrectly, by Mark Twain]

Carl Sagan: 

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Demosthenes: 

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

George Eliot: 

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

John F. Kennedy: 

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic

Mark Twain: 

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

Mark Twain: 

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said.

Mark Twain: 

When in doubt, tell the truth.

Montaigne: 

He who is not sure of his memory should not undertake the trade of lying.

Noam Chomsky: 

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

Otto von Bismarck: 

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Sam Rayburn: 

Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time.

Sir Walter Scott: 

Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!
Marmion. Canto vi. Stanza 17.


Thomas Jefferson: 

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual.

Virginia Woolfe: 

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

Wendy Kaminer: 

To rationalize their lies, people -- and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose -- are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just.