Good Liars Quotes & Sayings

Bad liars always think they're good at it. (quoting Michael Moynihan) — Jon Ronson

I write what I write, say what I say, 'cause I feel what I feel, and if I did it different, it would make me a liar! So I'd rather be an honest person than a good liar. — Dolly Parton

Eyes aren't good liars. — Shannon Wiersbitzky

A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars. — Steve Albini

He lies to himself the way he lies to me. He believes this. He actually believes that he was good to me. — Paula Hawkins

About God, I cannot accept any concept based on the authority of the Church ... As long as I can remember. I have resented mass indoctrination. I cannot prove to you there is no personal God, but if I were to speak of him, I would be a liar. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil. His universe is not ruled by wishful thinking, but by immutable laws — Albert Einstein

They need to get a good PR guy." "What's a PR guy?" "They're kind of like the old Greek sophists who played with words until you believed up was down. PR guys get paid to make people believe that a pile of shit is an investment in soil fertility. Professional liars." "Ah!" Manannan's expression lit with comprehension. "They are politicians?" "No, they're smarter and less pretty. They advise politicians. — Kevin Hearne

As the greatest liar tells more truths than falsehoods, so may it be said of the worst man, that he does more good than evil. — Samuel Johnson

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction. — Philip Pullman

Liars ought to have good memories. — Algernon Sydney Logan

I've said before that the common perception that all good actors should be good liars is exactly the opposite; only bad actors lie when they act. — Rob Lowe

Sometimes a policeman must confront people about lying. No one likes to be called a liar. But it is what it is! A fact is a fact! If someone is a liar, put them on notice. You should not be punished for doing the right thing. It is the job of a good investigator to get the truth. — C. Snyder

It's just past eight and I'm feeling young and reckless. The ribbon on my wrist says "Do not open before Christmas." Only liars, but we're the best. Only good for the latest trends. Only good cuz you can have almost famous friends, besides we've got such good fashion sense. — Fall Out Boy

Anyone who claims to be good at lying is obviously bad at lying. Thus - as a writer myself - I cannot comment on whether or not writers are exceptionally good liars, because whatever I said would actually mean its complete opposite. — Chuck Klosterman

To the left, civil rights are like a subway: When you reach your stop, you get off. Meanwhile, I'll just repeat what I said yesterday: For the New Yorker's target audience, the equivalence of free speech advocates to "gun nuts" is a clear signal of where they're supposed to fall on the argument. But all I can say is that if the "speech nuts" do as well as the "gun nuts" have done over the past couple of decades, we'll be in pretty good shape. And the lesson from the "gun nuts" is: Don't compromise, don't admit that there's such a thing as a "reasonable restriction," don't back down, and keep pointing out that your opponents are liars and hypocrites. And punish the hell out of politicians who vote with the other side. - Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit, 11 August 2015 — Vox Day

Clinton's an unusually good liar. Unusually Good. Do you realize that? — Bob Kerrey

You're a no good heartbreaker, you're a liar, and you're a cheat. I don't know why I let you do these things to me. — Aretha Franklin

People assume actors are born liars, but I'd argue the actor's job is to tell the truth. And I've realised I'm not a good liar. — Cate Blanchett

It sounds very pretentious, but I don't lie. It's too uncomfortable. A lot of people think because you're an actor that makes you a good liar, but one of the things I can't articulate is a bad lie. — Martin Shaw

Our rational, grown-up selves are good liars. The five-year-old tyrants within us are the ones who can tell it like it is. — Brene Brown

A liar ought to have a good memory. — Quintilian

But here's the thing - lying would have become useless thousands of years ago if countering it was as simple as dismissing the liars completely. The really good liars were like chemists, brewing formulas that were mostly truth, the toxins undetectable in the mixture. — David Wong

I'm amazed at how [police officers] don't want to come to court. They want to make the case and they want it to get prosecuted, but they don't want to come testify. Sorry, but the ultimate way of writing your report is telling it to a jury. When I was a defense lawyer, I used to think all police officers were liars, but now I find that there are only a few. Most of them are pretty straightforward and do a good job. But there are some, and if I know that they are liars or I know they tend to exaggerate, I try to take that into consideration when I'm dealing with their cases. — Mark Baker

Politics bores you?" Bronsen said.
Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations. — Iain Pears

My father once told me
that there are no gods;
only the cruel manipulations
of evil people
who pretended that their power was good
and their exploitation was love.
But if there are no gods;
why are we so hungry to believe in them?
Just because evil liars
stand between us and the gods
and block our view of them
does not mean that the bright halo
that surrounds each liar
is not the outer edges of a god, waiting
for us to find our way around the lie. — Orson Scott Card

Conquer anger by love, evil by good; Conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth. — Gautama Buddha

One man affirms that he has rode post a hundred miles in six hours; probably it is a lie; but supposing it to be true, what then? Why, he is a very good post-boy; that is all. Another asserts, and probably not without oaths, that he has drunk six or eight bottles of wine at a sitting; out of charity I will believe him a liar; for if I do not, I must think him a beast. — Lord Chesterfield

Funny isn't it?" said Sebastian. "The lies good people tell. He'll probably make you eggs every day for the rest of your life now, and you'll choke them down because you can't tell him you don't like them."
Clary thought of the Seelie Queen. "Love makes liars of us all? — Cassandra Clare

Are you tired of lyrical liars, passing fliers,
Wannabe MC's, but really good triers,
Tripping over mic cords, getting you bored,
A total fraud, this kind of thing I can't afford! — KRS-One

Pretty thing, and such a bad liar. A dog can smell a lie, you know. Look around you, and take a good whiff. They're all liars here ... and every one better than you. — George R R Martin

When money enters in - then, for a price, I become a liar - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work. — Edward Weston

Overcome anger with peace. Overcome evil with good. Overcome greed with generosity. Overcome liars with truth. — Juan Mascaro

Where you really have your eggs in one basket and that breach happens and you know you should go but you're still in love and you just don't know what to do. It hits you because it's not like
you're a cheater, and a liar, and I hate you, and you're no good, and I'm leaving. It's not that. It's like, I'm tormented. Even though you've done this and I know it, I still don't know what to do. I know I should go, but I don't want to. And that's why it's such a f***ed-up thing. — Jennifer Lopez

Tira: Whatever you're thinkin' you're wrong. I only like him like a brother. You ain't got nothin' to worry about ... Say listen you. A better dame than you once called me a liar and they had to sew her up in twelve different places. You're lucky I'm a little more refined than I used to be. And if you was as much a lady as I am, you'd get out of here before I get real sore. Alicia: You haven't a streak of decency in you. Tira: I don't show my good points to strangers. I'll trouble you to scram. — Mae West

My wife would not speak evil of ... anyone ... without cause. Joseph is a liar and not she. That Smith admired and lusted after many men's wives and daughters, is a fact, but they could not help that. They or most of them considered his admiration an insult, and treated him with scorn. In return for this scorn, he generally managed to blacken their reputations - see the case of ... Mrs. Pratt, a good, virtuous woman. — William Law

Sometimes there isn't a good guy or a bad guy. Sometimes even the ones you want to believe turn out to be liars. — Sarah Dessen

There is the past and its continuing horrors: violence, war, prejudices against those who are different, outrageous monopolization of the good earth's wealth by a few, political power in the hands of liars and murderers, the building of prisons instead of schools, the poisoning of the press and the entire culture by money. It is easy to become discouraged observing this, especially since this is what the press and television insist that we look at, and nothing more. — Howard Zinn

I don't doubt that every prince would like to be both; but since it is hard to accomodate these qualities, if you have to make a choice, to be feared is much safer than to be loved. For it is a good general rule about men, that they are ungrateful, fickle, liars, and deceivers, fearful of danger and greedy for gain ... [love] is a link of obligation which men, because they are rotten, will break anything they think doing so serves their advantage; but fear involves dread of punishment, from which they can never escape. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Have you forgotten what we are to say to ourselves every morning? 'Today I shall meet cruel men, cowards and liars, the envious and the drunken. They will be like that because they do not know what is good from what is bad. This is an evil which has fallen upon them not upon me. They are to be pitied, not... — C.S. Lewis

Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths. — Vernor Vinge

Free folk and kneelers are more alike than not, Jon Snow. Men are men and women women, no matter which side of the Wall we were born on. Good men and bad, heroes and villains, men of honor, liars, cravens, brutes ... we have plenty, as do you. — George R R Martin

I'm only doing this," he said, "because I really love hiding in haunted Eldren buildings on dark and creepy nights."
"You're a liar," said Jean, slowly. "I'm only doing this because I've always wanted to see Bug get eaten by an Eldren ghost."
"Liar," said Calo. "I'm only doing this because I fucking love hauling half a ton of bloody coins up out of a vault and packing them away on a cart."
"Liar!" Galdo chuckled. "I'm only doing this because while you're all busy elsewhere, I'm going to go pawn all the furniture in the burrow at No-Hope Harza's."
"You're all liars," said Locke as their eyes turned expectantly to him.
"We're only doing this because nobody else in Camorr is good enough to pull this off, and nobody else is dumb enough to get stuck doing it in the first place."
"Bastard!" They shouted in unison, forgetting their surroundings for a bare moment. — Scott Lynch

I'd rather take a beating sometimes than get in that gym every morning. Anyone who gets up that early and says he likes it is a goddamned liar. The only good thing about it is that when I'm finished, I look at myself in the mirror and say, Jack, you've done it again! — Jack LaLanne

They reminded me of the biggest liar I ever knew personally. Was a farmer, too. Reputation of pretty good farmer at that, but he lied so he had to hire another man to call his pigs. — Esther Forbes

It is a little-known fact about covert operations that you will spend a lot of time with people you can't really trust. They may be traitors and liars. We call them assets or informants. But mostly, in those days, I called him Zach. — Ally Carter

Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive. — Tim Allen

Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything. — Henry Ward Beecher

Genuine surprise is a great help when faced with an unwelcome duty. Of course, when it's the paying of debts you're forgetting, that can lead to broken fingers. And worse. I guess it's a form of lying - lying to oneself. And I'm very good at falsehoods. They often say the best liars half-believe their lies - which makes me the very best because if I repeat a lie often enough I can end up believing it entirely, no half measures involved! — Mark Lawrence

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself. — Adolf Hitler

Liars need to have good memories. — Algernon Sidney

Since Caesar, we know his historians are liars. The good writers get read. Bad history doesn't get read. — Peter Greenaway

One can be a good person and still believe that certain behaviors are a sin. I personally think lying is a sin, but some of my best friends are liars. — Tom King

I've never agreed with the conventional wisdom that 'actors are great liars.' If more people understood the acting process, the goals of good actors, the conventional wisdom would be 'actors are terrible liars,' because only bad actors lie on the job. The good ones hate fakery and avoid manufactured emotion at all costs. Any script is enough of a lie anyway. (What experience does any actor have with flying a spacecraft? Killing someone?) What's called for, what actors are hired for, is to bring reality to the arbitrary. — Rob Lowe

I hate a liar. Maybe because I'm such a good one myself, heh? Anyway, to find someone has told an out and out lie puts him on the other side of the fence from me for all time. — Clark Gable

Politics becomes even more of a magnet for self-aggrandizing sociopaths and liars than it already tends to be by nature, and men with no meaningful political power or authority waste their time and energy trying to convince complete strangers to convert to their way of thinking, even when those strangers have different group identities, different religious beliefs, and completely incompatible or opposing ideas about what is good or "best in life. — Jack Donovan

Because if you take something you're a thief.' She nursed the silence a moment. Downed the balance of her drink and silently signaled for another. 'Sounds simple, but you'd be amazed how many people don't get it. They steal but they call themselves honest. They cheat on their spouses and lovers but they think they're good people. They lie but they'd never call themselves liars. Well, let me tell you something, Todd ... She pointed toward him with her right hand, with her lit cigarette. He leaned away slightly. She looked into the mirror of his eyes and saw herself going too far. 'You are what you do. That's what I'm trying to tell you. What we do defines us. However we behave, conduct our lives ... that's real. The rest is just a story for publication. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

When I think it's good not to say the truth, I don't say anything. I don't like actors in general, they lie, they are liars, trust me. — Melanie Laurent

I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. — Osamu Dazai

A liar did ought to have a good memory. — Flora Thompson

Harris: Yes. In fact, self-deception might have paid evolutionary dividends in other ways. Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all - and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature. Now, clearly many things may have been adaptive for our ancestors - such as tribal warfare, rape, xenophobia - that we now deem unethical and would never want to defend. But I'm wondering if you see any possibility that a social system that maximizes truth-telling could be one that fails to maximize the well-being of all participants. Is it possible that some measure of deception is good for us? — Sam Harris

The really good liars, the true grandmasters of bullshit, are so damn convincing because they actually believe their own lies. — Jonathan Tropper

Someone ought to write a novel about me," said Lebedeva loftily. "I shouldn't care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can't abide a poor liar. — Catherynne M Valente

This world is beautiful but badly broken. St. Paul said that it groans, but I love it even in its groaning. I love this round stage where we act out the tragedies and the comedies of history. I love it with all of its villains and petty liars and self-righteous pompers. I love the ants and the laughter of wide-eyed children encountering their first butterfly. I love it as it is, because it is a story, and it isn't stuck in one place. It is full of conflict and darkness like every good story. And like every good story, there will be an ending. I love the world as it is, because I love what it will be. I love it because it spins and tilts, because it's dizzying, because of the night sky and the swirling lights. But I have run too far ahead. We should be more ... philosophical. — N.D. Wilson

I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world. My only ally is the tagged dissolute. The tagged dissolute. That is the only cross on which I wish to be crucified. Though ten thousand people criticize me, I can throw in their teeth my challenge: Are you not all the more dangerous for being without tags? — Osamu Dazai

Really good liars always work in something true to make the lie more plausible. - John Puller — David Baldacci

Liars are highly unlikely to admit their lies, never mind apologize for the hurt they've caused. Liars don't genuinely apologize. Deceit has become their full-out lifestyle. They are centered on themselves with no thoughts of the consequences of their lies. In cowardly style, they tell more lies to try and cover their tracks. They are not good at admitting they actually have shortcomings. — Cathy Burnham Martin

Actors are good liars, writers are good liars with good memories. — Daniel Keys Moran

We hesitate to call liars out in professional environments because we feel guilty for being suspicious. Calling someone a liar for no good reason is a frightening proposition for most. — Travis Bradberry

Only liars manage to always be out during bad times and in during good times. — Bernard Baruch

Do we really need a study on why people lie? They lie because it's easy, and cowards are good at "easy." Telling the truth takes moxie, and few have it. — Donna Lynn Hope

Once I was chastising Maharajji for giving photos to people who were worldly and didn't care about him. He said, "You don't understand me. If I tell a man he is a great bhakta (devotee). I am planting a seed. If a person already has the seed planted and growing, why should I plant another?" I said, "You are telling these drunkards, liars, and dacoits that they are real bhaktas. They will just go home and carry on their old behaviors." Maharajji said, "Some of them will remember what I said of them, and it will make them want to develop this quality in themselves. If ten out of a hundred are inspired in this way, it is a very good thing. — Ram Dass

A good liar must have a good memory. — Christopher Hitchens

Candidates have been telling you that if elected they would 'pull you from this bog hole of financial misery.' Now is a good chance to get even with 'em, by electing 'em, just to prove what a liar they are. — Will Rogers

It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will. — Sallust

Writers, all the good ones, are Natural Born Liars. — Daniel Keys Moran

A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory. — Christopher Hitchens

Him dressed. Me naked. It's always very erotic and I can feel his temperature rising as he is about to leave for work. "Are you going to be good?" he says, and I nod my head with the first of the day's lies. "Yes, I'm always good. — Chloe Thurlow