Lying quotes
11.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside lying — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"All literature, all philosophical treatises, all the voices of antiquity are full of examples for imitation, which would all lie unseen in darkness without the light of literature."
"O'er hill and field October's glories fade; O'er hill and field the blackbirds southward fly; The brown leaves rustle down the forest glade, Where naked branches make a fitful shade, And the lost blooms of Autumn withered lie."
"The notion that Nature does not proceed by jumps is only one of the budget of plausible lies that we call classical education. Nature always proceeds by jumps. She may spend twenty thousand years making up her mind to jump; but when she makes it up at last, the jump is big enough to take us into a new age."
"If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth."
"Wisdom is not knowledge, but lies in the use we make of knowledge."
"It's easy to get on the path of mastery. The real challenge lies in staying on it."
"Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love."
"Immodest creature, you do not want a woman who will accept your faults, you want the one who pretends you are faultless - one who will caress the hand that strikes her and kiss the lips that lie to her."
"Just think how many thoughts a blanket smothers while one lies alone in bed, and how many unhappy dreams it keeps warm."
"The public is not to see where power lies, how it shapes policy, and for what ends. Rather, people are to hate and fear one another."
"I don't have emotions about a lot of things. I rarely get angry, I rarely cry. I guess I do get excited a lot, but I don't get sad and enormously happy. I think a lot of people who talk about all that crap are lying. Right now I'm just trying to maintain happiness — that's all I really care about. Anyway, when you're my age and your hormones are kicking in, there's not much besides sex that's on your mind."
"In fact, whatever exists in the universe, in essence, in appearance, in the imagination, the painter has first in his mind and then in his hands ... it lies in his power to create them . . ."
"Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us."
"The State is the coldest of all cold monsters, and coldly it tells lies, and this lie drones on from its mouth: 'I, the State, am the people'."
"Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others."
"I've read that if an avalanche buries you and you're lying there underneath all that snow, you can't tell which way is up or down. You want to dig yourself out but pick the wrong way, and you dig yourself to your own demise."
"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.""
"There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor."
"Figures don't lie, but liars figure."
"An injurious lie is an uncommendable thing; and so, also, and in the same degree, is an injurious truth a fact that is recognized by the law of libel ."
