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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"If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct."
"Your preciousness lies in your essence; it cannot be lost by anything that happens."
"Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do."
"When I complete a novel I set it aside, and begin work on short stories, and eventually another long work. When I complete that novel I return to the earlier novel and rewrite much of it. In the meantime the second novel lies in a desk drawer."
"In God's wildness lies the hope of the world-the great fresh unblighted, unredeemed wilderness. The galling harness of civilization drops off, and wounds heal ere we are aware."
"Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God."
"The Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal will take care of themselves. Look after the courts of the poor, who stand most in need of justice. The security of the republic will be found in the treatment of the poor and the ignorant. In indifference to their misery and helplessness lies disaster."
"I was playing in the juniors at Wimbledon I forgot to turn my mobile phone off. It was lying there in my bag and it rang in the middle of a match, and it was one of my friends from school saying, 'Murray, you're on the telly!' I learnt from that. I now put my phone on silent."
"The search for scapegoats is essentially an abnegation of responsibility: it indicates an inability to assess honestly and intelligently the true nature of the problems which lie at the root of social and economic difficulties and a lack of resolve in grappling with them."
"I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain."
"Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. There lies its immense value. For what it seeks is to disturb monotony of type, slavery of custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of a machine. It seeks to show new perspectives and other choices. It is a way to help expand and liberate the consciousness; our experiences, understandings, imaginings, options and thereby our lives."
"Fiction gives us empathy: it puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gifts of seeing the world through their eyes. Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over."
"What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us. And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen."
"If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view and see things from that person's angle as well as from your own."
"There are some griefs so loud/They could bring down the sky/And there are griefs so still/None knows how deep they lie."
"In Pakistan lies our deliverance, defence and honour...In our solidarity, unity and discipline lie the strength, power and sanction behind us to carry on this fight successfully. No sacrifice should be considered too great. We shall never accept any future constitution on the basis of a united India."
"It is moments like these that force us to try harder, and dig deeper, and to discover gifts we never knew we had - to find the greatness that lies within each of us."
"The world is large,” said Okonkwo. “I have even heard that in some tribes a man’s children belong to his wife and her family.” “That cannot be,” said Machi. “You might as well say that the woman lies on top of the man when they are making the babies."
"The difference between a baby and adult is that a baby believes in everything while the adult doubts everything. Babies also only tell the truth until they learn what a lie is."
"The best hope for peace in the world lies in the simple but far-reaching recognition that we all have many different associations and affiliations, and we need not see ourselves as being rigidly divided by a single categorization of hardened groups, which confront each other."
