Deception/lying Quotes

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

Mark Twain

I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won t.

Mark Twain

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

Mark Twain

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

Benjamin Franklin

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Benjamin Franklin

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with. And, in the end, I distilled everything down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

Christopher Hampton

They say is often a great liar.

Proverb

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

They deceive themself and thus us; merchants and tycoons of the world. Evil has gone from bad to worse for a worthless reward.

James Dye

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

Otto von Bismarck

A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help.

Lionel Shriver

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the fronts people assume before one another's eyes, and the front a writer puts on the face of reality.

Francoise Sagan

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.

Kin Hubbard

Lying is like alcoholism. You are always recovering.

Steven Soderbergh

Deceive the rich and powerful if you will, but don't insult them.

Japanese Proverb

If you do not wish to be lied to, do not ask questions. If there were no questions, there would be no lies.

B. Traven

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

Michel de Montaigne

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.

John Sterling

Hope of ill gain is the beginning of loss.

Democritus

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

Angela Thirkell