Quotes on Lying
Lying Quotes
Men hate those to whom they have to lie. Victor Hugo
"In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. " - Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X
"A half truth is the worst of all lies,because it can be defended in partiality." - Solon - (c.638 BC-558 BC) Athenian statesman, lawmaker
"History is an account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers, mostly knaves, and soldiers, mostly fools."-- Ambrose Bierce, American writer, 1842-1914
"One is as healthy as the lies one tells."
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"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." ~ Dresden James
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"To pretend to know when you do not know is a disease."- Lao-Tzu [Li Erh] (570-490 BC) 'Old Sage', Father of Taoism
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"A truth that's told with bad intent, beats all the lies you can invent." - William Blake : (1757-1827) English poet, painter, engraver
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"When the President starts lying he begins to need evidence to back up his lies because in this democracy he is questioned on his statements. It then percolates down through the bureaucracy that you are helping the Boss if you come up with evidence that is supportive of our public position and you are distinctly unhelpful if you commit to paper statements that might leak to the wrong people.
The effect of that is to poison the flow of information to the President himself and to create a situation where a President can be almost, to use a metaphor, psychotically divorced from the realities in which he is acting...." Daniel Ellsburg to the US Senate on Foreign Relations, May 13, 1970
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"Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise" Adolf Hitler - German Chancellor, leader of the Nazi party
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"It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." --Henry Kissinger
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“As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand." Josh Billings
"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil." Socrates
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"The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool." Stephen King
The men that American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest the most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. -- H L Mencken (attributed: source unknown)
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“The history of the race, and each individual's experience, are thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal.” Mark Twain
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"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false." - Bertrand Russell