Lying About The Truth Quotes & Sayings

the great thing about lying was people believed it so long as the lie was close enough to the truth. Lena — Karin Slaughter

We all want to live in a world where we can make a difference ... That's why Spider-Man fights the good fight. Or Captain Marvel. Or me. Or ... There are a lot of us. And we don't all wear masks these days. Iron Man went public. So did Captain America. Others. Probably because it's harder to keep secrets in an internet surveillance age. But I think some of it, too, is that the ethical paradox can wear you down. No one on the white-hat side has ever hidden his or her identity with less than noble intent: to make the fight about something bigger than us. To represent a greater justice, where the focus can be on right and wrong ... and not on whether the bad guys will exact reprisal on those close to us. And sometimes you have to lie ... because you can justify a lie if lives are riding on it. Even as you fight for, as the saying goes, truth and justice ... even if you're a lawyer who has sworn to live by the truth ... you willingly bear false witness. — Mark Waid

If you spend a lot of time lying to people, you think a lot about what the truth means. — Penn Jillette

I couldn't blame him for not believing me because it wasn't exactly true. The truth is that you /do/ care. Of course you do. And it hurts to hear people say those things about you. But the hurt changes, over time. At first, it's sharp and hot, like a fiery dagger stabbing you in the heart, but when you've heard the same insults over and over and over, the pain changes. It becomes a dull, throbbing ache -- like a toothache. A sort of background pain that you can ignore for a few minutes at a time, except when you're lying in bed at night, trying to sleep. That's when it really gets to you. — Cat Clarke

You put something down and you don't know immediately what it is. It has always been like that ... All you have to know is whether you're lying or whether you're telling the truth, you can't afford to make a mistake about that distinction any longer. — John Berger

Your own self, your personality and existence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom you meet, ... into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, which still lives on and appears to be, in some way, the truth about you. Even a flattering picture is ... a lie. — Isak Dinesen

My dad used to open up photo albums and stuff and you'd have to tell a story about the picture but you couldn't tell the truth so you had to make up a story about whatever you were looking at. He really taught us how to lie. — Sara Quin

Phrase it in an interesting way; don't phrase it in a mean or unfriendly way. Bob Dole said that if there's anything he would have done differently, he would have said [to George Bush] "Start telling the truth about my record" instead of "Stop lying about my record." Frankly, had he done that, life might be different for Bob Dole today. — Roger Ailes

A photograph isn't necessarily a lie, but nor is it the truth. It's more of a fleeting, subjective impression. What I most like about photography is the moment that you can't anticipate: you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected. — Martine Franck

If you think somebody is telling a big lie about you, the only way to answer is with the whole truth. — Harry S. Truman

If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don't listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don't need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it's just a matter of time before things will be better for you. — Miguel Ruiz

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth! — Ursula K. Le Guin

If, on the contrary, they hear from you about themselves, they will be in no position to say, "The Lord is lying." Is hearing the truth about oneself from you anything different from knowing oneself? And can anyone have this self-knowledge and still protest, "It is not true," unless he himself is lying? — Augustine Of Hippo

So many things come from people's parents lying to them about the truth about things. I feel like, once those ideas die with people, we'll be good in a couple of generations. — Vince Staples

Then why does every sentence beginning 'We need to talk' end in disaster? Our whole evolutionary history has been about trying to stop information from getting communicated - camouflage, protective coloration, that ink that squids squirt, encrypted passwords, corporate secrets, lying. Especially lying. If people really wanted to communicate, they'd tell the truth, but they don't. — Connie Willis

I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but also that what one might say against it is false. Despite this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it, changes its form, and becomes more and more firm. — Robert Musil

But sleep didn't come. She could hear Jace's soft piano playing through the walls, but that wasn't what was keeping her awake. She was thinking of Simon, leaving for a house that no longer felt like home to him, of the despair in Jace's voice as he said 'I want to hate you', and of Magnus, not telling Jace the truth: that Alec did not want Jace to know about his relationship because he was still in love with him. She thought of the satisfaction it would have brought Magnus to say the words out loud, to acknowledge what the truth was, and the fact that he hadn't said them - had let Alec go on lying and pretending - because that was what Alec wanted, and Magnus cared about Alec enough to give him that. Maybe it was true what the Seelie Queen had said, after all: Love made you a liar. — Cassandra Clare

My lying is a second skin by now, so easy to forget it's there, so I don't always remember that lying is actually an art, and those who aren't meticulous about it are easily exposed. — Jillian Cantor

Above all the studies in the world, study your own hearts; waste not a minute more of your precious time about frivolous & unsubstantial controversies. My dear flock, I have, according to the grace given me, labored in the course of my ministry among you, to feed you with the heart strengthening bread of practical doctrine, and I do assure you, it is far better you should have the sweet and saving impressions of gospel truths, feelingly and powerfully conveyed to your hearts, than only to understand them by a bare ratiocination, or a dry syllogistical inference. Leave trifling studies to such as have time lying on their hands and know not how to employ it. Remember you are at the door of eternity, and have other work to do. Those hours you spend upon heart-work in your closets, are the golden spots of all your time and will have the sweetest influence up to your last hour. — John Flavel

You really know when people are lying?"
He nodded.
"Prove it."
"Got a boyfriend?"
"No."
"Is there a man you're interested in?"
"No."
"You're lying."
I stiffened. "I am not."
"Yes, you are. He may not be a boyfriend but there's someone you're interested in enough that you're thinking about having sex with him."
I glared. "I am not. And you can't possibly know that."
He shrugged. "Sorry, Mac, I hear the truth even when the person isn't admitting it to themselves." One dark brow lifted. "I don't suppose it might be me?"
I blushed. He'd just made me think it. Us. Naked. Wow. I was a perfectly healthy woman, and he was a gorgeous man. "No," I said, embarrassed.
He laughed, gold eyes glittering. "Lie. A whopper. Gotta love that. Have I told you I'm a big believer in fulfilling a woman's fantasies? — Karen Marie Moning

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 is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. — Samuel Johnson

An unconscious, gentle process whereby people who want to be loving attempt to be so by telling little white lies, by withholding some of the truth about themselves and their feelings in order to avoid conflict. Pseudocommunity is conflict-avoiding; true community is conflict-resolving. — M. Scott Peck

You must understand printing lies about Republican candidates is OK. It's called vetting. Printing the truth about liberals - that's called 'swift-boating'. — Howie Carr

The first two concepts - morality and immorality - are well understood in America: codes and boundaries of behavior are set by principles, doctrines, dictate, or convention. It's the third one - amorality - that is largely misunderstood but crucial to identify and comprehend. Amorality is a state of affairs where there are no moral principles or rules to follow or betray. None. Even though a culture may have rules regarding physical behavior, if there are no moral standards regarding truth, for example, then one cannot be right or wrong in such a societal vacuum because there is nothing to be right or wrong about. Therefore, even if lip service to the virtue of truth telling exists on one level or another, lying is firmly established in many cultures as an amoral practice. — Alexandra York

Beneath all the rhetoric about relevance lies a profoundly disturbing possibility - that people may base their lives upon an illusion, upon a blatant lie. The attractiveness of a belief is all too often inversely proportional to its truth ... To allow "relevance" to be given greater weight than truth is a mark of intellectual shallowness and moral irresponsibility. — Alister E. McGrath

I'm sorry," she said humbly. "I haven't wanted to lie to you."
"I should hope so. You're the worst liar I've ever met." He thought about it for a moment, then added, "
or the best. Now I'm all confused. — Tamora Pierce

First, you're sorry for invading my privacy for years, years before I even knew you existed. Second, you're sorry for kidnapping me, isolating, controlling me, and manipulating me. Third, you're sorry for lying to me, pretending you cared and oh yearh, marrying me. Fourth, listen carefully Tony, this is the big one ... you're sorry for framing me for attempted murder, resulting in incarceration in a federal penitentiary."
"I am deeply sorry for one and four. I did provide you with an alternative destination for number four. I am not proud of two, but three would never have happened without it. I am not, and never will be sorry for three. And, for the record, I never lied about or pretended to love you. I didn't realize it at first, but I have loved you since before you knew my name. And, you forgot our divorce. I am sincerely sorry for that also. — Aleatha Romig

I don't care what you meant to do. I really don't.
I only care about what you actually do. That's important. The rest of it is just a bunch of bull shit.
--- Grace. — Christian Kiefer

I don't know about lying for novelists. I look at some of the great novelists, and I think the reason they are great is that they're telling the truth. The fact is they're using made-up names, made-up people, made-up places, and made-up times, but they're telling the truth about the human being - what we are capable of, what makes us lose, laugh, weep, fall down, and gnash our teeth and wring our hands and kill each other and love each other. — Maya Angelou

The basic principles of logic dictate that a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time ... and that a statement must be either true or false ... Lucy is lying, or she is crazy, or she is telling the truth. She can't be some combination, and she can't be none of those things ... The laws of logic dictate that she must be one of them ... Notice how practical common sense about the suposed impossibility of other worlds doesn't come into the equation. — Sarah Arthur

There's something profoundly liberating about giving, yet we don't do it often enough. It begs the question: why not? For some of us, our demanding schedules overtake our time to volunteer. For others, our fear of economic instability manifests a mindset dominated by pernicious lies like, "You can't afford to give" and "If you give, you won't have enough". However, truth of the matter is we simply cannot afford to not give back! — Jen Lilley

Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are least dangerous is the man of ideas. He is acquainted with ideas, and moves among them like a lion-tamer. Ideas are dangerous, but the man to whom they are most dangerous is the man of no ideas. The man of no ideas will find the first idea fly to his head like wine to the head of a teetotaller. It is a common error, I think, among the Radical idealists of my own party and period to suggest that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they are so sordid or so materialistic. The truth is that financiers and business men are a danger to the empire because they can be sentimental about any sentiment, and idealistic about any ideal, any ideal that they find lying about, just as a boy who has not known much of women is apt too easily to take a woman for the woman, so these practical men, unaccustomed to causes, are always inclined to think that if a thing is proved to be an ideal it is proved to be the ideal. — G.K. Chesterton

The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn't stay in the government at that level, or you're made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth - essentially, never say the whole truth - of what they expect and what they're doing and what they believe and why they're doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters. — Daniel Ellsberg

I used to be ashamed by the way that I grew up. I tried to lie my way through better times, but when you think that honesty and truth is really your best weapon you embrace it and put it behind you. In the end, it drives you and motivates you to do good work. No one should be ashamed about where they come from as long as you desire to be a compassionate and decent person. — George Lopez

Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men. — John Stoltenberg

Straight people don't have to think every time they talk, about whether they are coming out. We do. That might be hard, but that's also why we have to come out. if we don't, it's pretty much impossible to have a conversation about anything beyond the weather without lying. we really have no choice, do we ? — Bill Konigsberg

The truth is that the newspaper is not a place for information to be given, rather it is just hollow content, or more than that, a provoker of content. If it prints lies about atrocities, real atrocities are the result. — Karl Kraus

People who are open about their own faults, especially, often want to ferret out "inner feelings" beneath the surface and expose any falsehood, and they think that it's in their inner feelings that the truth lies. But I don't think that's the truth. — Mamoru Hosoda

He whistled, and Mrs. O'Leary bounded after him to the far end of the grove. Leneus huffed indignantly and brushed the twigs off his shirt. "Now, as I was trying to explain, young lady, your boyfriend has not sent any reports since we voted him into exile." "You tried to vote him into exile," I corrected. "Chiron and Dionysus stopped you." "Bah! They are honorary Council members. It wasn't a proper vote." "I'll tell Dionysus you said that." Leneus paled. "I only meant ... Now see here, Jackson. This is none of your business." "Grover's my friend," I said. "He wasn't lying to you about Pan's death. I saw it myself. You were just too scared to accept the truth." Leneus's lips quivered. "No! Grover's a liar and good riddance. We're better off without him." I pointed at the withered thrones. "If things are going so well, where are your friends? Looks like your Council hasn't been meeting lately. — Rick Riordan

What would I tell her? The truth, I hope. That in my longing for originality and relational honesty and a hundred other I-don't-know-whats, this action, while strange and socially awkward, makes more sense than just about anything else in my world. And even though it's cryptic and more than a little odd, sometimes cryptic and odd are better than lying down for the Man. — David Arnold

In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don't notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it's too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away, — Miguel Ruiz

Blessed the one who loves truth continually and has not lent his mouth as an instrument of impiety by lying, for he fears the commandment about idle speech. — Ephrem The Syrian

The thing about lying to your parents is, you have to do it to protect them.
It's for their own good. — Sophie Kinsella

In short, you can't have the truths without the Truth. Either Jesus is telling the truth about Himself, or He is lying about everything else too. None of this business about Jesus being merely an enlightened Buddha of sorts, offering wiser-than-average insights into how to live a healthy, balanced life. None of this quoting Jesus in order to make your own point about justice or fairness or peace on earth when you don't really believe what Jesus said about Himself. — Sarah Arthur

I don't want her to know the truth about us."
"I'm merely going to explain to explain that I'm not Nathaniel's mistress."
"You can't talk about mistresses to a well-bred Englishwoman. It violates every propriety."
"To speak in a forthright manner violates propriety?" She rose to stare at him with thinly veiled amusements. "No wonder you English lost the colonies. What with all the lying and the 'propriety' and the evasions, how do you ever get anything done?"
As she crossed the box to sit down beside Evelina, he stared after her in fascinated amazement. Americans were mad - that's all there was to it. — Sabrina Jeffries

Political correctness is a major defect of the western ethos. Some Western countries have even passed blasphemy laws that would put you in legal hot waters if you say anything negative about Islam. This means that the truth about Islam cannot be said but Muslims are given total freedom to spread their religion with lies. Islam thrives were truth is suppressed. That is one reason that westerners convert to Islam. They are lied to. How do you expect a society to survive when truth is banned and lies are allowed? — Ali Sina

Real liars don't lie about anything," Hanna said. "They just lie. 'About' is a word liars use to justify their lying, to make it seem like a localized problem." "You've made quite a study," Grace said, trying to sound light and wry. "But I still don't know," Hanna said. "And that upsets me. With a liar, you can never know the whole truth, ever. You can't ever be sure that this version is the real version. There is no end, no bottom. Sometimes I wonder if the whole thing was a hoax. — Rebecca Scherm

And the reason is found in the first lie-the lie which you hold as the truth about God-that God cannot be trusted; that God's love cannot be depended upon; that God's acceptance of you is conditional; that the ultimate outcome is thus in doubt. For if you cannot depend on God's love to always be there, on whose love can you depend? If God retreats and withdraws when you do not perform properly, will not mere mortals also? — Neale Donald Walsch

The nice thing about poetry is that you're always stretching the definitions of words. Lawyers and scientists and scholars of one sort or another try to restrict the definitions, hoping that they can prevent people from fooling each other. But that doesn't stop people from lying.

Cezanne painted a red barn by painting it ten shades of color: purple to yellow. And he got a red barn. Similarly, a poet will describe things many different ways, circling around it, to get to the truth.

My father also had a nice little simile. He said, "The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. And you can't lay your hand on it. All you do is circle around and point, and say, 'It's in there somewhere. — Pete Seeger

We are missing the truth. We live in a society that lies and fosters and sells dishonesty at a discount. Remember the line, 'America spells cheese K-R-A-F-T? That does not spell cheese! We tell our kids that as long as it looks good on the outside, don't worry about the inside. Or work hard and you'll be rewarded in the end. That's not necessarily true anymore. We don't tell the truth about certain things. Young people see our hypocrisy. We haven't given them a model to follow. — Iyanla Vanzant

If someone's lying about something small, you don't know what else they're lying about. I'm a big girl, I can handle the truth - even if it's not good news. — Jennifer Morrison

A man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know. — G.I. Gurdjieff

The bottom of being is left logically opaque to us, a datum in the strict sense of the word, something we simply come upon and find, and about which (if we wish to act) we should pause and wonder as little as possible. In this confession lies the lasting truth of empiricism. — William James

The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced it is the truth because I don't believe he would repeat a lie so often. Maybe the truth does not matter, but I want to know it if only so that I can come to some conclusions about such questions as: whether he is angry at me or not; if he is, then how angry; whether he still loves her or not; if he does, then how much; whether he loves me or not; how much; how capable he is of deceiving me in the act and after the act in the telling. — Lydia Davis

Raise your hand if you've spent nights crying yourself to sleep, raise your hand if you've felt as if you'd rather hide in bed all day than face the people that make you feel small or powerless! Raise your hand if you've felt as if you'd rather lie to people than tell them the truth about who you really are, because at least you wouldn't be the victim of hateful behavior or prejudice! And raise your hand if lying feels almost as bad. — Dianna Agron

When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink. — Peggy Noonan

It's all about truth," he said. "We don't trust governments because they don't tell us the truth. They make every story sound like it's good news, even when it's not. Those who are in power sing their own praises. Those who aren't in power criticise those that are. And no-one tells the whole truth. That's why we look for conspiracies. We know we are being lied to. We just don't know what they are lying to us about. — Will Once

They have lied to us. They can't keep us from dying, so They lie to us about death. A cooperative structure of lies. What have they ever given us in return for the trust, the love--They actually say 'love'--we're supposed to owe Them? Can They keep us from even catching cold? from lice, from being alone? from anything? Before the Rocket we went on believing, because we wanted to. But the Rocket can penetrate, from the sky, at any given point. Nowhere is safe. We can't believe Them any more. Not if we are still sane, and love the truth. — Thomas Pynchon

Animals, even plants, lie to each other all the time, and we could restrict the research to them, putting off the real truth about ourselves for the several centuries we need to catch our breath. What is it that enables certain flowers to resemble nubile insects, or opossums to play dead, or female fireflies to change the code of their flashes in order to attract, and then eat, males of a different species? — Lewis Thomas

As long as a journalist tells the truth, in conscience and fairness, it is not his job to worry about consequences. The truth is never as dangerous as a lie in the long run. I truly believe the truth sets men free. — Ben Bradlee

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear. — Miguel Angel Ruiz

Folk songs are evasive-the truth about life, and life is more or less a lie, but then again that's exactly the way we want it to be. We wouldn't be comfortable with it any other way. A folk song has over a thousand faces and you must meet them all if you want to play this stuff. A folk song might vary in meaning and it might not appear the same from one moment to the next. It depends on who's playing and who's listening. — Bob Dylan

There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House. — Herman Melville

We raise the hypothesis that truth telling may be the natural response absent clear motivations to lie (hence, most human communication) and that lying may prevail as the automatic reaction when it brings about important self-profit. — Anonymous

Every call to worship is a call into the Real World ... I encounter such constant and widespread lying about reality each day and meet with such skilled and systematic distortion of the truth that I'm always in danger of losing my grip on reality. The reality, of course, is that God is sovereign and Christ is savior. The reality is that prayer is my mother tongue and the eucharist my basic food. The reality is that baptism, not Myers-Briggs, defines who I am. — Eugene H. Peterson

Year-end financial statements ... express a truth about office life which is no less irrefutable yet also, in the end, no less irrelevant or irritating than an evolutionary biologist's proud reminder that the purpose of existence lies in the propagation of our genes. — Alain De Botton

What people think about you is not supposed to matter much, so long as you yourself know where the truth lies; but I have found out, as have others who move in and out of newspaper headlines, that on occasion it can matter a good deal. For once you enter the world of headlines you learn there is not one truth but two: the one which you know from the facts; and the one which the public, or at any rate a highly imaginative part of the public, acquires by osmosis. — Richard E. Byrd

This is what I've been waiting for my whole life. A President who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying a**hole. — Lewis Black

There's a huge misconception that it's all about the oil, and the truth is there's actually not much oil left in Abyei. The misperception arose because when the peace agreement was signed in 2005, Abyei accounted for a quarter of Sudan's oil production. Since then, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague defined major oil fields to lie outside Abyei. They're in the north now, not even up for grabs, and they account for one percent of the oil in Sudan. The idea that it's "oil-rich Abyei" is out of date. — Rebecca Hamilton

Then if any one at all is to have the privilege of lying, the rulers of the State should be the persons; and they, in their dealings either with enemies or with their own citizens, may be allowed to lie for the public good. But nobody else should meddle with anything of the kind; and although the rulers have this privilege, for a private man to lie to them in return is to be deemed a more heinous fault than for the patient or the pupil of a gymnasium not to speak the truth about his own bodily illnesses to the physician or to the trainer, or for a sailor not to tell the captain what is happening about the ship and the rest of the crew, and how things are going with himself or his fellow sailors. Most — Plato

You can't build a future if you do not know who you are. You can't become who you are meant to be if you can't tell the truth about who you are, what you have, and everything about your life. The truth is the absolute essence to your success, while lies are the absolute essence to your failures. — Suze Orman

It's a weird thing about the truth: It protects you. What really makes you vulnerable is when you're lying because you're going to get caught. When you tell the truth, there's a strange relief that comes. — Eve Ensler

Some might say that looking inside of ourselves for spiritual truths is egocentric and selfish, and that egolessness and selflessness lie in working for others in the world. But until we find our inner truth, our work in the world will always revolve around our 'selves'. As long as we think about the world in terms of 'self' and 'others', our actions will be selfish. Our 'self' follows us wherever we go, so positive results will be limited. — Tarthang Tulku

It was entirely taken for granted that there wasn't any lying in our family, and I was advanced in adolescence before I realized that in plenty of homes where I played with schoolmates, and went to their parties, children lied to their parents and parents lied to their children and to each other. It took me a long time to realize that these very same everyday lies, and the stratagems and jokes and tricks and dares that went with them, were in fact the basis of the scenes I so well loved to hear about and hoped for and treasured in the conversation of adults. My instinct - the dramatic instinct - was to lead me, eventually, on the right track for a storyteller: the scene was full of hints, pointers, suggestions, and promises of things to find out and know about human beings.I had to grow up and learn to listen for the unspoken as well as the spoken - and to know a truth, I also had to recognize a lie. — Eudora Welty

The one great thing about football is that whatever happens it will manifest itself on the pitch. If it's right, you'll see it on the pitch, if it's wrong, it will be on the pitch. In business you can get fellas who are doing crooked deals and nobody knows anything about it. There is an ultimate honesty about football. Politics is part of the lying game, I wouldn't trust any of them. In football you can hide for a while, but ultimately the truth comes out. I always loved that. — Johnny Giles

How did you stand lying about yourself for years? You must have felt cut off from the whole world."
I fought down the lump in my throat. "I did indeed. And then I met this prince who seemed able to see through me, to the truth behind the lies. He was terrifying and fascinating, but to my amazement, it was an immeasurable relief to be seen. — Rachel Hartman

Lying is like trying to hide in a fog: If you move about you're in danger of bumping your head against the truth, and as soon as the fog blows off, you are gone anyhow. — Josh Billings

Savasana - corpse pose - is the hardest pose of all. You would think, 'What could be hard about lying on the floor?' But the truth is that we, as humans, are not wired to be still and do nothing. — Jennifer Weiner

What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world. — Patrick Marber

You think I lead these people for my own whim? I lead these people, honorable knight, because they have no one but me. Because they came to me when the humans slaughtered their families and drove them out. And I'll keep this place safe for them no matter how much spying and lying and killing it takes. You've never been a commander, lordling, or you'd know that it's easy to prate about honor when you're not responsible for others' lives. But let me tell you a bit of truth
sometimes honor doesn't get it done. — Hilari Bell

In fact, lying to ourselves may be the most dangerous thing in the world because we live our truth whether we are honest about it or not. — Cortney S. Warren

Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration [ ... ]; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour [ ... ]. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist"
from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense". — Friedrich Nietzsche

He who travels far will often see things Far removed from what he believed was Truth. When he talks about it in the fields at home, He is often accused of lying, For the obdurate people will not believe What they do not see and distinctly feel. Inexperience, I believe, Will give little credence to my song. — Hermann Hesse

Live your own truth and it won't matter how many lies they tell about you. The truth will prove itself. — Tony Gaskins

My three favorite travel writers of all time are Robert Louis Stevenson, Graham Greene, and Chuck Thompson. Smile When You're Lying not only tells the truth about the travel-writing racket, it gets to the heart of some of the travel industry's best-kept secrets. — Kinky Friedman

I know little of my past, but almost from the beginning of my imprisonment I have known of you. I waited. I called you to my side. I hated you for allowing my suffering to continue.
She caught his face in her hands, suddenly anxious that he believe her. "I didn't know. I swear to you, I didn't know. I never would have left you there." Grief clogged her throat that she had not somehow ended his suffering sooner. What was it about him that drew her like a magnet, that captivated her and made her want to ease his pain? The urge was so strong in her, so intense, she could hardly bear to see him lying so vulnerable and shattered.
I know you speak the truth; you cannot lie to me. It was a courageous thing you did, rescuing me. But as your lifemate I can do no other than forbid you to ever take such a risk again. — Christine Feehan

It had seemed entirely sensible at the time. A simple way to test the truth of her claim that she had lain with de Villiers. To show her that lying to him was useless. To make a point.
Instead, he had ignited a desire that burned him like none he had ever felt before.
He had expected Lady Laurien d'Amboise to be a timid little convent mouse. Quiet and passive and pliant. Easily manageable. Instead she was outspoken and strong-willed...and stunning in a way he could not even describe.
An innocent beauty caught up in a deadly game that was none of her making....
Malcolm rose to leave, chuckling.
"And what is there to laugh about?"
Darach gave his jovial friend a dour look.
Malcolm stopped just long enough to do his best imitation of Darach. "'Simple. Kidnap one French lass, hold her for a fortnight, and return her to de Villiers after he meets our demands. Perfectly simple. — Shelly Thacker

Lies hold civilization together. If people ever seriously begin telling each other what they really think, there'd be no peace. Good-bye to tact. Good-bye to being polite. Good-bye to showing tolerance for other people's buffooneries. The fact that we claim to admire Truth is probably the biggest lie of all. But that's part of the charade, part of what makes us human, and we do not even think about it. In effect, we lie to ourselves. Lies are only despicable when they betray a trust. — Jack McDevitt

I've never met or spoken to David Lee Roth, yet it's rather ironic that even he's saying Eddie's lying about things. I'm saying he's not telling the truth, yet Eddie insists that the two of us are lying! You be the judge. — Sammy Hagar

The truth about a man lies first and foremost in what he hides. — Andre Malraux

The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If out start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight and you'll get caught. Once suspicion is planted it becomes exponentially harder to sell the next lie. — Victoria Schwab

Truth is relative," the man replied. "Our minds have a tendency to remember things only the way in which they happened to us, the way they made us feel. It results in us inadvertently lying about what we experienced — Dylan Saccoccio

Given the sin of impiety through which they [the Romans] sinned against the divine nature [by idolatry], the punishment that led them to sin against their own nature followed ... I say, therefore, that since they changed into lies [by idolatry] the truth about God, He brought them to ignominious passions, that is, to sins against nature; not that God led them to evil, but only that he abandoned them to evil ... — Thomas Aquinas

Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn't enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that's not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end. — Philip Pullman

We [ with Russel Crowe] had an Arabic coach there [ in the Body of Lies] that was really helpful, because it was more so than any accent. You have to be so exact, and there's different dialects of Arabic from country to country so it was really, really difficult to tell you the truth. And one of the hardest things I've ever had to do language-wise, because it comes from the throat. It's different. And also learning about the customs and the culture and all that, so we had advisors for that sort of thing. — Leonardo DiCaprio

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. The weird thing about telling someone they're dying is it tends to focus their priorities. You find out what matters to them. What they're willing to die for. What they're willing to lie for. — David Shore

I am sick of the disparity between things as they are and as they should be. I'm tired.I'm tired of the truth and I'm tired of lying about the truth. — Edward Albee

Unfortunately, as much as I am gullible, I also hate lying. I tend to tell the truth a lot ... lying just isn't worth it. But I think I'm guilty of telling people that I'm 5 minutes away when really I'm about 45 or an hour away. — Monica Raymund

or the need for a Trump 2012 presidential campaign ("This is what I've been waiting for my whole life, a president who's not afraid to tell the truth about being a lying asshole!"), — Chris Smith