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.
"In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia."
"Moss grows where nothing else can grow. It grows on bricks. It grows on tree bark and roofing slate. It grows in the Arctic Circle and in the balmiest tropics; it also grows on the fur of sloths, on the backs of snails, on decaying human bones. ... It is a resurrection engine. A single clump of mosses can lie dormant and dry for forty years at a stretch, and then vault back again into life with a mere soaking of water."
"If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it."
"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition."
"The secret of great fortunes without apparent cause is a crime forgotten, for it was properly done."
"Revolutionaries do not make revolutions. The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and then they can pick it up."
"We're all looking from the point of view of our own reality tunnels. And when we begin to realize that we're all looking from the point of view of our own reality tunnels, we find that it is much easier to understand where other people are coming from. All the ones who don't have the same reality tunnel as us do not seem ignorant, or deliberately perverse, or lying, or hypnotized by some mad ideology, they just have a different reality tunnel. And every reality tunnel might tell us something interesting about our world, if we're willing to listen."
"But the worst enemy you can meet will always be yourself; you lie in wait for yourself in caverns and forests. Lonely one, you are going the way to yourself! And your way goes past yourself, and past your seven devils! You will be a heretic to yourself and witch and soothsayer and fool and doubter and unholy one and villain. You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?"
"Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me: There lie they, and here lie we Under the spreading chestnut tree."
"The Universe energy doesn't lie."
"Difference is of the essence of humanity. Difference is an accident of birth and it should therefore never be the source of hatred or conflict. The answer to difference is to respect it. Therein lies a most fundamental principle of peace: respect for diversity."
"Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth."
"The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth."
"It's kinda hard to be optimistic, When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted."
"I'm lying in my bed, blanket is warm, this body will never keep me safe from harm. I still feel your hair, black ribbons of coal. Touch my skin to keep me whole. If only you'd come back to me. To feel you at my side, wouldn't need no Mojo Pin to keep me satisfied."
"A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is... A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in."
"If death were the end, then there is no God, and there are no realised masters - it is all a pack of lies. The great ones wouldn't urge you to became better, for what would be the use if, good or bad, we are all junked at the end of life? What would be the value of the scriptures? There would be no justice whatsoever if this present existence is all there is to each individual life. What of those souls who lived only a few years, or lived in blind or crippled bodies?"
"There are no whole truths: All truths are half-truths."
"Advertising is legalized lying."
"If you keep hiding your true self, your life becomes like slow death. Once you become free from the lies and the hiding of yourself, then life becomes vibrant again."
