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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"The world is his who can see through its pretension. What deafness, what stone-blind custom, what overgrown error you behold, is there only by sufferance,--by your sufferance. See it to be a lie, and you have already dealt it its mortal blow."
"When I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with pleasure. The musty deposits of 2,000 years of inhumanity, intolerance, and uncleanliness lie in the foul-smelling alleys... The amiable dreamer of Nazareth has only contributed to increasing the hatred... What superstition and fanaticism on every side!"
"I'll tell you all my secrets but I lie about my past."
"He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood."
"I knew Ginny was lying about that tattoo."
"Then I felt that every inflection of my voice, every word in my mouth, was a lie, a play whose sole purpose was to cover emptiness and boredom. There was only one way I could avoid a state of despair and a breakdown. To be silent. And to reach behind the silence for clarity or at least try to collect the resources that might still be available to me."
"To abstain from lying is essentially wholesome."
"Reverence the highest, have patience with the lowest. Let this day's performance of the meanest duty be thy religion. Are the stars too distant, pick up the pebble that lies at thy feet, and from it learn the all."
"As far as I can make out, women's friendships with each other are based on a gush of lies and pretty speeches that mean nothing. You'd think they were all wolves trying to seduce each other the way they flatter and flirt when they're together."
"The teaching of the church, theoretically astute, is a lie in practice and a compound of vulgar superstitions and sorcery."
"A hound will die for you, but never lie to you. And he'll look you straight in the face."
"There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one's self on lies and fables."
"If somebody harbours delusions, I think that should disqualify them from office, regardless whether the delusions are religious. Letting someone who thinks the god Jehovah will bail him out serve in public office is like letting a man who believes in Santa Claus run a Toys 'R Us. The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
"A lie cannot live."
"Take a day to heal from the lies you've told yourself and the ones that have been told to you."
"The way to liberation lies through this realization of the Self, by God-communion and by remaining in this God-aware state of the soul while performing dutiful actions. Any individual can reach this supreme actionless state by the renunciation of all fruits of actions: performing all dutiful acts without harbouring in his heart any likes and dislikes, possessing no material desires, and feeling God, not the ego, as the Doer of all actions."
"Giving is more joyous than receiving, not because it is a deprivation, but because in the act of giving lies the expression of my aliveness."
"It is easy for me to put on a show and be cocky..but to express oneself honestly not lying to oneself, now that my friend is very hard to do"
"Abortion and racism are evil twins, born of the same lie. Where racism now hides its face in public, abortion is accomplishing the goals of which racism only once dreamed. Together, abortionists are destroying humanity at large and the black community in particular."
"All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it."
