Lying Quotes

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.

Aesop

What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!

Georges Bernanos

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

Samuel Butler

Any fool can tell the truth, but it requires a man of some sense to know how to tell a lie well.

Samuel Butler

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically - for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist - but then what isn't?

Quentin Crisp

Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on the verge of truth.

Augustus William Hare

The great mass of people...will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.

Adolf Hitler

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

William Mcilvanney

A liar should have a good memory.

Quintilian

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

Saki

O, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott

False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

Socrates

The liar at any rate recognizes that recreation, not instruction, is the aim of conversation, and is a far more civilised being than the blockhead who loudly expresses his disbelief in a story which is told simply for the amusement of the company.

Oscar Wilde

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Oscar Wilde