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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"For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us."
"A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be"
"When you've fallen on the highway / and you're lying in the rain, / and they ask you how you're doing / of course you'll say you can't complain."
"I smile when I'm angry , I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right , and I'd die for the truth in my secret life ."
"(Acting) certainly comes-100 percent-from the need to be loved. Any actor who says this isn't true is lying."
"The merit of painting lies in the exactness of reproduction. Painting is a science and all sciences are based on mathematics. No human inquiry can be a science unless it pursues its path through mathematical exposition and demonstration."
"They may then be willing to cast principled votes based on an educated understanding of the public interest in the face of polls suggesting that the public itself may have quite a different understanding of where its interest lies."
"What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm."
"The newspaper is a Bible which we read every morning and every afternoon, standing and sitting, riding and walking. It is a Biblewhich every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every table and counter, and which the mail, and thousands of missionaries, are continually dispersing. It is, in short, the only book which America has printed, and which America reads. So wide is its influence."
"What we are entering is a power age, and the importance of the power age lies in its ability, rightly used with the wage motive behind it, to increase and cheapen production so that all of us may have more of this world's goods. The way to liberty, the way to equality of opportunity, the way from empty phrases to actualities, lies through power"
"I rebel at the notion that I can't be part of other groups, that I can't construct identities through elective affinity, that race must be the most important thing about me. Is that what I want on my gravestone: Here lies an African American?"
"We are all guilty of crime the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What those powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring."
"No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie."
"Come, my child," I said, trying to lead her away. "Wish good-bye to the poor hare, and come and look for blackberries." "Good-bye, poor hare!" Sylvie obediently repeated, looking over her shoulder at it as we turned away. And then, all in a moment, her self-command gave way. Pulling her hand out of mine, she ran back to where the dead hare was lying, and flung herself down at its side in such an agony of grief as I could hardly have believed possible in so young a child. "Oh, my darling, my darling!" she moaned, over and over again. "And God meant your life to be so beautiful!"
"They've gotta stop reporting wind chill. That's nonsense. It really is. I don't know where they came up with it, why they came up with it, but it's a lie. They come on, "Well, it's 27 degrees today, but with the wind chill, it's minus 3." Well, then it's minus 3, asshole! I don't need to know what the weather was like if the conditions were perfect!"
"In a wonderland they lie, dreaming as the days go by"
"Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species?"
"The secret of force in writing lies not so much in the pedigree of nouns and adjectives and verbs, as in having something that you believe in to say, and making the parts of speech vividly conscious of it."
"Be NOBLE! and the nobleness that liesIn other men, sleeping, but never dead,Will rise in majesty to meet thine own."
"The streets lie, the sidewalks lie, everything lies You can try and read it but you're gonna get it wrong...all wrong The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter but you're gonna get it wrong And it's gonna sink its teeth into your flesh and pull you to the bottom."
