lies Quotes

“Ask no questions, and you’ll be told no lies.”

“Readers are advised to remember that the devil is a liar.”

“It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same--everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another’s existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same--people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world.”

“Doubt thou the stars are fire; Doubt that the sun doth move; Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.”

“Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight. Mercutio: And so did I. Romeo: Well, what was yours? Mercutio: That dreamers often lie. Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.”

“You may lie.”

“His mind reeled. Now, empowered to ask questions of utmost rudeness-and promised answers-he could, conceivably (though it was almost unimaginable), ask someone, some adult, his father perhaps: “Do you lie?” But he would have no way of knowing if the answer he received was true.”

The Herdmans were absolutely the worst kids in the history of the world. They lied and stole and smoked cigars (even the girls) and talked dirty and hit little kids and cussed their teachers and took the name of the Lord in vain and set fire to Fred Shoemaker’s old broken-down toolhouse.

“He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider but it was a very corrupting business.”

“You know I hate, detest, and can’t bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because it appalls me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies - which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world - what I want to forget.”

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.

“I am no king, and I am no lord, And I am no soldier at-arms,” said he. “I’m none but a harper, and a very poor harper, That am come hither to wed with ye.” “If you were a lord, you should be my lord, And the same if you were a thief,” said she. “And if you are a harper, you shall be my harper, For it makes no matter to me, to me, For it makes no matter to me.” “But what if it prove that I am no harper? That I lied for your love most monstrously?” “Why, then I’ll teach you to play and sing, For I dearly love a good harp,” said she.”

“I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.”

“Oft in lies truth is hidden.”

“To crooked eyes truth may wear a wry face.”

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”

Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself.

Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves.

Yes, I created a lie. But because you believed it, you found something true about yourself.

Artists use lies to tell the truth.

You know, that might be the answer – to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That’s a trick that never seems to fail.

“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.”

“I wish we could stop the little lies. I don’t mean that one has to be brutally frank. I don’t believe that we should be brutal about anything, however, it is wonderfully liberating to be honest. One does not have to tell all that one knows, but we should be careful what we say is the truth.”

“I had always assumed he knew me as a baby. My mom had never said it outright, but still, I’d felt it must be true. Now, to be told that he’d never even seen me . . .”

“JUROR #9: No. He wouldn’t really lie. But perhaps he made himself believe he heard those words and recognized the boy’s face.”

“JUROR #10: I’ve lived among them all my life. You can’t believe a word they say. You know that. I mean, they’re born liars.”

“I know you now, old enemies of mine! Falsehood! . . . Have at you! Ha! and Compromise! Prejudice, Treachery!. . . Surrender, I? Parley? No, never! You too, Folly,—you? I know that you will lay me low at last; Let be! Yet I fall fighting, fighting still!”

“For a long time, I was mad at you. The way you cut me out of everything hurt me, and so I kept what I knew to myself. But then even after I wasn’t mad anymore, I still didn’t say anything, and I don’t even really know why. Pudge had that kiss, I guess. And I had this secret.”

“The hardest part about pranking, Alaska told me once, is not being able to confess. But I could confess on her behalf now. And as I slowly made my way out of the gym, I told anyone who would listen, “No. It wasn’t us. It was Alaska.”

“Do you even remember the person she actually was? Do you remember how she could be a selfish? That was part of her, and you used to know it. It’s like now you only care about the Alaska you made up.”

“One way or the other, I have a very valuable piece of information. And if they know I have it, they might do something to alter the force field so I can’t see the aberration anymore. So I lie.”

“I’m sure I was a huge disappointment. I’m not pretty or smart or athletic. I’m just like them - an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies.”

“You know they’ll try to kill you if you actually get to the bottom of everything.”

“Why had nobody ever told him? Dumbledore, Hagrid, Mr. Weasley, Cornelius Fudge... why hadn’t anyone ever mentioned the fact that Harry’s parents died because their best friend had betrayed them?”

“I was an imposter, one of the most wanted criminals on four continents, and at the moment I was doing my thing, putting a super hype on some nice people.”

“Nick loved a girl who doesn’t exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can’t help it, it’s what I’ve always done: The way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what’s coveted, what’s au courant? I think most people do this, they just don’t admit it, or else they settle on one persona because they are too lazy or stupid to pull a switch.”

“The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.”

“Miss Everdeen I thought we had agreed not to lie to each other.”

“I was always aware that I was Frank Abagnale, Jr., that I was a check swindler and a faker, and if and when I was caught I wasn’t going to win any Oscars. I was going to jail.”

“I wasn’t a Pan Am pilot or any other kind of pilot. I was an imposter...”

“It wasn’t altogether a relaxing life. I didn’t exactly keep my finger on the panic button, but I put a lot of mileage on my running shoes.”

“I’ve been described by authorities and news reporters as one of this century’s cleverest bum-check passers, flimflam artists and crooks, a con man of Academy Award caliber. I was a swindler and and poseur of astonishing ability.”

“TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil.”

“In the track of fear we have so many conditions, expectations, and obligations that we create a lot of rules just to protect ourselves against emotional pain, when the truth is that there shouldn’t be any rules. These rules affect the quality of the channels of communication between us, because when we are afraid, we lie.”

“When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her though I know she lies, That she might think me some untutor’d youth, Unlearned in the world’s false subtleties.”

“When she opened the package at home there was written on the box, under the skull and bones: “For rats.”″

“She told them that her father was not dead. She did that for three days, with the ministers calling on her, and the doctors, trying to persuade her to let them dispose of the body. ”

“You have to be a bit of a liar to tell a story the right way.”

“As with all truly wild things, care is necessary in approaching them. Stealth is useless. Wild things recognize stealth for what it is, a lie and a trap. While wild things might play games of stealth, and in doing so may even occasionally fall prey to stealth, they are never truly caught by it.”

“Greatness inspires envy, envy engenders spite, spite spawns lies.”

“If I could write the beauty of your eyes, And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say ‘This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne’er touch’d earthly faces.‘”

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren’t going to want to go on living.

“Not that it mattered though. The truth seldom ever did in the face of a juicy lie.”

“Even my best and only friend Ricky didn’t believe me, and he’d been there.”

“My dad explained it to me: Grandpa had told him some of the same stories when he was a kid, and they weren’t lies, exactly, but exaggerated version of the truth.”

“Better terrible truths than kind lies.”

“I’m telling tales, my dear, not lies. Lies are mean things, and tales are meant to entertain.”

“I don’t think it was a lie, Maxwell, do you? I think he needed something to hope for and so he invented this rather remarkable fantasy you describe. Everybody needs something to hope for. Don’t call it a lie. Kevin wasn’t a liar.”

When we do not listen to the lies that demons whisper into our ears, they will attack us with lies in the mouths of men.

“The more honest one is, the easier it is to continue being honest, just as the more lies one has told, the more necessary it is to lie again. By their openness, people dedicated to the truth live in the open, and through the exercise of their courage to live in the open, they become free from fear.”

“‘What do you hate most?’ he asks. ‘A lie. And you?’ ‘Ownership,’ he says. ‘When you leave me, forget me.’”

″‘And as for keeping my word, well, these preliminary talks are being filmed and broadcast live,’ and he gestured back toward the camera. ‘Some of your people are watching as we speak. Others will see video-tapes. Others will be told, by those they trust. The camera does not lie.’ ‘Everybody lies,’ said Wednesday.”

First comes smiles, then lies. Last is gunfire.

“And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.”

“Nothing good shone out of Mrs. Twit’s face. In her right hand she carried a walking stick. She used to tell people that this was because she had warts growing on the sole of her left foot and walking was painful. But the real reason she carried a stick was so she could hit things with it, things like dogs and cats and small children.”

“I never spoke more plainly in my life. Try believing the evidence instead of insisting that the cameras must be at fault because what they saw was not what you expected.”

“He doesn’t know what the truth means, so he does not even know how he lies. ”

“And if you can’t pick what you do or think about, then maybe you aren’t really real, you know? Maybe I’m just a lie that I’m whispering to myself.”

“This, O men of Athens, is the truth and the whole truth; I have concealed nothing, I have dissembled nothing.”

“Could all be lies. Could all be part of revenge scheme, planned during his decade behind bars. But if true, then what? […] Never mind. Answers soon. Nothing is insoluble.”

“When men and women punish each other for truth telling, we reinforce the notion that lies are better. To be loving we willingly hear the other’s truth, and most important, we affirm the value of truth telling. Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.”

“I used to believe, in the deepest part of me, that there was something irreparably wrong with me. And love was a lie. Now I’m beginning to see that love is the truth, and the darkness is a lie.”

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this”, he begins. He doesn’t blush, and his eyes don’t dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. “You’re very attractive.”

“I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this”, he begins. He doesn’t blush, and his eyes don’t dart away. Instead I find myself staring into a pair of oceans - one perfect, the other blemished by that tiny ripple. “You’re very attractive.”

“I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine.”

“And so tonight we’re going to make the lie true. ”

“Maybe it’s being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthful”

“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.”

“I—want to—knowwwww! ... Somebody must be lyin’! I want to know!”

“People couldn’t be trusted. They lied. They cheated. And then, when everything you were and hoped to be shattered apart into a million pieces, they left.”

“The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.”

“In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself.”

“He’s right. It’s cruel to give hope where none should be. It only turns into disappointment, resentment, rage—all the things that make this life more difficult than it already is.”

“Let’s keep our eyes on the sky. They’ll throw tomatoes; they’ll lie about us and try to discredit us. When we rise, they’ll try to undermine us. But when they do, we’ll remember the truth and bless our enemies and find strength in God.”

“Remember the person you’re supposed to be, and remember well…You are pretending to be raised Red, but you’re Silver by blood. You are now Red in the head, Silver in the heart….From now until the end of your days, you must lie. Your life depends on it, little lightning girl.”

“The elections were faked and they believe the results.”

“Call Me Jonah. My parents did, or nearly did. They called me John.”

“Trump came to believe he understood everything about the media—who you need to know, what pretense you need to maintain, what information you could profitably trade, what lies you might tell, what lies the media expected you to tell. ”

“And the media came to believe it knew everything about Trump—his vanities, delusions, and lies, and the levels, uncharted, to which he would stoop for ever more media attention.”

“‘I’m fine.’ It’s a lie. I am not fine. My head is a symphony of pain, a sadistic master maestro conducting an opus of excruciating, devastating perfection.”

“I would have been a Bokononist then, if there had been anyone to teach me the bittersweet lies of Bokonon.”

“Anyone unable to understand how a useful religion can be founded on lies will not understand this book either.”

“Truth was the enemy of the people, because the truth was so terrible, so Bokonon made it his business to provide the people with better and better lies.”

“But eventually, as they always will, the rumors reached me. And everybody knows you can’t disprove a rumor.”

“The elders are looking for someone to blame. We will give them many someones.” “You will give forth the names of people as witches? When you know you girls are not really afflicted?” “We will, and the elders will be glad to know that the cause of the bickering and trouble in this place lies not at their own feet but is the fault of witches living amongst us.”

“Do all maesters lie so poorly? I told Varys that I was giving Prince Doran my nephew Tommen to foster. I told Littlefinger that I planned to wed Myrcella to Lord Robert of the Eyrie. I told no one that I had offered Myrcella to the Dornish … that truth was only in the letter I entrusted to you.”

“People may guess or frame a supposition, But I can say for certain, it’s no lie, God bade us all to wax and multiply. That kindly text I well can understand.”

“Get to that Zone where you can shut out all the noise, all the negativity and fear and distractions and lies, and achieve whatever you want, in whatever you do.”

“and when love came to us twice and lied to us twice we decided to never love again that was fair fair to us and fair to love itself.”

“Let me get this straight, Mr. Zinzi. You’d buy stolen goods for profit, rat on somebody to save your own hide, but you’re too good to lie. Is that right?”

“The man who lies to himself can be more easily offended than any one.”

“The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.”

“Disclaimer: While Pastafarianism is the only religion based on empirical evidence, it should also be noted that this is a faith-based book. Attentive readers will note numerous holes and contradictions throughout the text; they will even find blatant lies and exaggerations. These have been placed there to test the reader’s faith.”

“Presently he said, frowning more than ever, ‘So you were a real princess all the time. Amy, you are a little fibber! And for two pins,” said Peregrine, “I’d give you a good hard spanking!’ The Ordinary Princess stopped looking ashamed of herself and giggled instead. ‘You can’t spank a Royal Highness,’ she said.”

″‘No,’ she shot back without looking at him. ‘You’re telling lies with a little bit of the truth mixed in is all.‘”

“I don’t think children ever forget the lies their parents tell them.”

“Oh, about beer I never lie,” Crandall said. “A man who lies about beer makes enemies.”

“Be authentic to yourself, but if you must cheat, cheat yourself out of the lies the world created.”

“Connor looks flustered and cornered for a moment before he comes to his senses and says, ‘Yeah. Yeah, I am.‘”

″‘So… everything that happened back there was all a show?’ Now it’s Connor’s turn to be unsure. ‘I guess. Sort of. Wasn’t it?‘”

“Something else drove (Connor) to run to that porch, but whatever the real reason was, Connor’s keeping it to himself.”

″‘You two can do whatever you like. Risa and I broke up this morning. Should I turn off the light when I leave?‘”

″‘A Finder of Occasions?’ I asked, and the stranger replied, ‘Someone who lies in wait until the opportunity is afforded to do harm or wreak havoc...without leaving a trace behind.‘”

“I’m not a good lier. Except Brewster. It takes a lot of lies to keep a marriage going.”

“The easiest lies to tell are the true ones.”

“Political genius lies in extracting success even from the people’s ruin.”

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

“There are things that I canna tell you, at least not yet. And I’ll ask nothing of ye that ye canna give me. But what I would ask of ye—when you do tell me something, let it be the truth. And I’ll promise ye the same. We have nothing now between us, save—respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies. Do ye agree?”

“I never lie,” I said offhand. “At least not to those I don’t love.”

“There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple’s corridors; she does not know herself. ‘I can endure lies,’ she cries. ‘I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitude”

“The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).”

“Then one day (it happened to be the Fourth of July), a most uncommon-looking delivery boy rode around town slipping letters under the doors of the chosen tenants-to-be. The letters were signed ‘Barney Northrup’. The delivery boy was sixty-two years old, and there was no such person as Barney Northup.”

“Was it a purple bird with green winged tips and yellow feet? Or a yellow bird with purple wing tips and green feet? Or was it a white bird with black spots like that soccer ball behind my easy chair?”

″ ‘It wasn’t a bird!’ said Sister, ‘It was a soccer ball.’ ‘And it was all my fault!’ shouted Brother. ‘It was just as much my fault!’ shouted Sister.”

“I’m not worried about the lamp. We can always get another lamp, or we can glue this one back together. What I’m sad about is the thought that maybe, just maybe, my cubs, whom I’ve always trusted, aren’t telling me the truth. And trust is not something you can put back together again.”

“But they never, ever told a whopper because trust is one thing you can’t put back together once it’s broken.”

“I will be brave. I am the only one who knows about the ovens, but I will be brave. I will not take away their hope, which is all they have. I will not tell them that the Nazis often lied and said people were going to take showers when they took them to be killed.”

“No matter how you hope, no matter how you try, you can’t make truth out of a lie.”

“Little lies that make people feel better are not bad, like thanking someone for a meal they made even if you hated it, or telling a sick person they look better when they don’t, or someone with a hideous new hat that it’s lovely. But to yourself you must tell the truth.”

“The cubs looked into Mama’s eyes, then at each other, and then they began to tell one of the biggest whoppers that has ever been told in Bear Country. ”

“Then a man asked, ‘What is your name, boy?’ Henry did not know what to say. He did not want to tell his name. So he answered, ‘Henry James.’ Now this was Henry’s name, but it was not all of his name.”

“Lies are not rooted in the mind in the way truth is.”

“That can’t be my story. That’s only a start. ”

″‘And has she told you what happens to the children?’ ‘No, she hasn’t told me that. I only just know that it’s about Dust, and they’re like a kind of sacrifice.’ Again, that wasn’t exactly a lie, she thought; she had never said that Mrs. Coulter herself has told her. ‘Sacrifice is a rather dramatic way of putting it. What’s done is for their good as well as ours.‘”

“The wolf relates how he was making a birthday cake for his dear old granny when he ran out of sugar. Off he went to his neighbor’s to borrow a cup, but, because of his terrible cold, he sneezed a great sneeze, and the whole straw house fell down, leaving the occupant, the First Little Pig, dead as a doornail. So the wolf ate him.”

“Sometimes discovering the truth can leave you more hopeless than believing the lies…”

“A lie. That’s a flat-out lie. Funny how one lie leads to another and before you know it, your whole life can be a lie.”

″‘Your grandmother has caught a cold, grand children, and it is dark and windy out here. Quickly open up, and let your Po Po come in,’ the cunning wolf said. Tao and Paotze could not wait. One unlatched the door and the other opened it. They shouted, ‘Po Po, Po Po, come in.‘”

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”

″‘But it was all lies,’ whispered Mrs. Povey, there being no polite way to put it. MCC Berkshire drew himself up to his full six foot and more. ‘Lies, madam?’ ‘Well, er... yes actually... lies.’ ‘Not lies, madam,’ he declared, magnificently unrepentant. ‘Fiction...‘”

″‘My little jewels,’ said the wolf, ‘this is your grandmother, your Po Po.’ ‘Po Po!’ Shang said. ‘Our mother has gone to visit you!‘”

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes form lying continually to others and himself.”

“Believing the lie that time will heal all wounds is just a nice way of saying that time deadens us.”

“Miro pondered what she was thinking. Did she suspect that she would die before this incident was over? Has she seen through Artkin’s lies, even though he lied to skillfully?”

“She told the police that it was all her fault.”

“It isn’t my stomach. It’s my essay. It’s a good essay. I know it’s a good essay. She said it was awful and I was too pleased with myself. She said it was a lie. I called her a fool.”

“Then he said, ‘I did it for your good, Christopher. Honestly I did. I never meant to lie.‘”

“Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.”

“You think you’d know what a killer sounds like. That their lies would have a different texture, some barely perceptible shift. A voice that thickens, grows sharp and uneven as the truth slips beneath the jagged edges.”

″‘There are Jews scattered all over the world,’ he said, ‘and the Nazis are telling terrible lies about them. So it’s very important for people like us to prove them wrong.’ ‘How can we?’ asked Max. ‘By being better than other people,’ said Papa. For instance, the Nazis say that Jews are dishonest. So it’s not enough for us to be as honest as anyone else. We have to be more honest.‘”

“Why do you lie so much? And about the weirdest little things?”, my mother always asked me. “I don’t know”, I always said. But I did know. It was very simple. Because it was a better story.”

“Don’t dare tell your father that drunkard freed you. Tell him I freed you myself, since I’m the captain of the ship and ordered him to rescue you.”

“Half the places I have been to, never were. I make things up. Half the things I say are there cannot be found.”

“Seven spindles of hemp! I have a daughter so crazy about work that she’d even spin the wool on the sheep’s back!”

″...murderers don’t leave traces behind them which tell the truth.”

“Matilda told such Dreadful Lies, It made on Gasp and Stretch one’s Eyes; Her Aunt, who, from her Earliest Youth, Had kept a Strict Regard for Truth, Attempted to Believe Matilda: The effort very nearly killed her, And would have done so, had not She Discovered this Infirmity.”

“Don’t ask me no questions and I won’t tell you no lies.”

″‘It is a lie! it is a lie! She is not beautiful! There is more charm in my little finger than in her whole body.‘”

“Welcome to the beautiful Sinclair family. No one is a criminal. No one is an addict. No one is a failure.”

“I’ll never understand it—why people find the truth more shocking than lies.”

“Every truth is a kindness, even if it makes others uncomfortable. Every untruth is an unkindness, even if it makes others comfortable.”

“You know, I read somewhere that sixty percent of us can’t go more than ten minutes without lying. Little slippages: to make outselves sound better, more attractive, to others. White lies to avoid causing offence. SO it’s not like I’ve done anything out of the ordinary. It’s only human.”