Lying quotes
11.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside lying — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Racism springs from the lie that certain human beings are less than fully human. It's a self-centered falsehood that corrupts our minds into believing we are right to treat others as we would not want to be treated."
"Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth."
"The American People will take Socialism, but they won't take the label. I certainly proved it in the case of EPIC [End Poverty in California]. Running on the Socialist ticket I got 60,000 votes, and running on the slogan to 'End Poverty in California' I got 879,000. I think we simply have to recognize the fact that our enemies have succeeded in spreading the Big Lie. There is no use attacking it by a front attack, it is much better to out-flank them."
"To fall for," "to be fallen for"--I feel in these words something unspeakably vulgar, farcical, and at the same time extraordinarily complacent. Once these expressions put in an appearance, no matter how solemn the place, the silent cathedrals of melancholy crumble, leaving nothing but an impression of fatuousness. It is curious, but the cathedrals of melancholy are not necessarily demolished if one can replace the vulgar "What a messy business it is to be fallen for" by the more literary "What uneasiness lies in being loved."
"A man who knows a thing, recognizes a given danger, and sees with his own eyes the possibility of a remedy, damned well has the duty and the obligation not to work 'silently', but to stand up openly against the evil and for its cure. If he does not do so then he is a faithless, miserable weakling who fails either from cowardice or from laziness and incompetence....Every last agitator who possesses the courage to defend his opinions with manly forth-rightness, standing on a tavern table among his adversaries, accomplishes more than a thousand of these lying, treacherous sneaks."
"What does God do all day long? He gives birth. From the beginning of eternity, God lies on a maternity bed giving birth to all. God is creating this whole universe full and entire in this present moment."
"True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands--whether of individuals or entire peoples--need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world."
"As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs."
"In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty...in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe."
"Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists."
"A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies."
"The technique of infamy is to start two lies at once and get people arguing heatedly over which is the truth."
"Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting."
"A little lie can travel half way 'round the world while Truth is still lacing up her boots."
"Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expedition you led against Greece, or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?"
"Here lies Dobby, a free elf."
"Now know I well what people sought formerly above all else when they sought Teachers of virtue. Good sleep they sought for themselves, and poppy-head virtues to promote it! To all those be-lauded sages of the academic chairs, wisdom was sleep Without dreams: they knew no higher significance of life. Even at present, to be sure, there are some like this preacher of virtue, and not always so honorable: but their time is past. And not much longer do they stand: there they already lie. Blessed are those drowsy ones: for they shall soon nod to sleep.-Thus spoke Zarathustra."
"Apocalypse does not point to a fiery Armageddon but to the fact that our ignorance and our complacency are coming to an end. The exclusivism of there being only one way in which we can be saved, the idea that there is a single religious group that is in sole possession of the truth—that is the world as we know it that must pass away. What is the kingdom? It lies in our realization of the ubiquity of the divine presence in our neighbors, in our enemies, in all of us."
"The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice."
"Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal."
