Lying Truth Quotes & Sayings

I was living a life of a lie. And I was doing a lot of things, that hurt a lot of people. And stripping away denial and rationalization you start coming to the truth of who you really are and that can be very ugly. — Tiger Woods

Truth does not lie beyond humanity, but is one of the products of the human mind and feeling. — D.H. Lawrence

One mark of a deteriorating society is when people cannot discern between truth and lies. Another is that they don't care and will believe whatever their itching ears want to hear. — Cal Thomas

I could not understand what these sixty-five thousand people lived for, what they read the gospel for, why they prayed, why they read books and magazines. What good had they gained from all that had been said and written hitherto if they were still possessed by the same spiritual darkness and hatred of liberty, as they were a hundred and three hundred years ago?
So these sixty-five thousand people have been reading and hearing of truth, of justice, of mercy, of freedom for generations, and yet from morning till night, till the day of their death, they are lying, and tormenting each other, and they fear liberty and hate it as a deadly foe. — Anton Chekhov

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth. I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth. — Jack Kirby

To get at the truth of your calling, you have to crack open that false self and see what lies within. — Justine Musk

If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it becomes a part of your future. — John Spence

There is the sheer emotional, intellectual, physical, chemical pleasure of your children. The honest truth is that the world holds no greater gratification than lying in bed with your children, putting your leg on top of them in a semi-crushing manner, while saying sternly, You are a poo. — Caitlin Moran

The best lies to tell," said Jane, "are the ones people want to believe. — Jasper Fforde

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

Laws must never be made compatible with crimes, no more than lying should be in harmony with the truth. — Vincent De Paul

Lesson number one in trying to develop the ability of independent thought: Understand that EVERYTHING the government says has the potential to be lies and deception. You can believe it's the truth only after you question, exhaust every avenue, and find that their story checks out. If you're a patriot, it's your duty to always question your government anyway, at every turn. A patriot is loyal to his country and his countrymen, not his government. — Derek R. Audette

The most intangible, and therefore the worst, kind of a lie is a half truth. This is the peculiar device of a conscientious detractor. — Washington Allston

Aristotle was once asked what those who tell lies gain by it. Said he - That when they speak truth they are not believed. — Diogenes

It seems too simplistic that just repeating a persuasive message should increase its effect, but that's exactly what psychological research finds (again and again). Repetition is one of the easiest and most widespread methods of persuasion. In fact it's so obvious that we sometimes forget how powerful it is. — Jeremy Bean

One cannot properly drink without self-deception: the lips have to deny the liquor that just passed down the throat. It was surely for the relief of drunkards that the Lord God did not write upon the stone tablets the commandment: thou shalt not lie. The word has to deny the addiction. Among the tribe of alcoholics, lying is a badge of honor - the truth is first an indiscretion, later an affront, and finally a source of despair. If you truly drink, you have to announce to all and sundry that you do not drink; if you admit you drink, that means you do not truly drink. True all-out drinking has to be concealed; anyone who reveals it is giving in, confessing to helplessness, and all that remains for him is weeping, the gnashing of teeth, and the 12 step program. — Jerzy Pilch

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

The truth [always] lies in things that have no words. — Dennis Quaid

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organ of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing by ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you're defending a lie, you can only defend it with obfuscations and other lies. You can't defend a lie with the truth. — Harvey Bialy

Raw, naked truth exchanged between the black man and the white man is what a whole lot more of is needed in this country - to clear the air of the racial mirages, cliches, and lies that this country's very atmosphere has been filled with for four hundred years. — Alex Haley

Don't be sorry for the truth. A harsh truth is less damaging than a tender lie, and the worst lies are the ones we tell ourselves. — Dianna Hardy

Yeah, it didn't work like that because lies cannot protect — Danielle Bernock

Telling one lie almost always requires another, and before the storyteller knows it, they will be caught inside of their own web. — Jenna Alatari

A lie is profanity. A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth. — Richard Pryor

I'd rather deal with the consequences of the truth rather than the benefits of a lie. — Devin Kelley

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood bu those who hear it. — William James

The truth is always easier than a lie or an evasion - easier to deal with and easier to live with. — J.K. Rowling

He who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as he would tell a lie.
[Lat., Qui semel a veritate deflexit, hic non majore religione ad perjurium quam ad mendacium perduci consuevit.] — Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth. — William Faulkner

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked ... The man who lies to the world, is the world's slave from then on ... There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all. — Ayn Rand

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down." — Diogenes

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

We find it easy to believe that praise is sincere: why should anyone lie in telling us the truth? — Jean Rostand

All right, Pendel had lied to him, if lying was the word. He had told Osnard what he wanted to hear and gone to extraordinary lengths to obtain it for him, including making it up. Some people lied because lying gave them a kick, made them feel braver or cleverer than all the lowly conformists who went on their bellies and told the truth. Not Pendel. Pendel lied to conform. To say the right things at all times, even if the right things were in one place, and the truth was in another. — John Le Carre

Within infinite myths lies the Eternal Truth Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes Indra, a hundred And I, only two — Devdutt Pattanaik

In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself - only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie. — Simone Weil

Meanwhile, back in the torture room, the cardinal is now being forced to bleed into a chalice and consecrate his own blood, not to God, but to Satan. They also cut off his big toe, and he is made to hold it up like a Host and say, "This is my body," the keenwitted Angelo observing that it's the first time he's told anything like the truth in fifty years of systematic lying. — Thomas Pynchon

Let me tell you the truth: The truth is what is. And what should be is a fantasy a terrible, terrible lie that someone gave the people long ago. — Lenny Bruce

One can lie with the mouth, but with the accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him; you have no business with consequences, you are to tell the truth. — Samuel Johnson

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

For reporting a scientific finding, I was called a 'conspiracy theorist.' Only in America is scientific analysis seen as conspiracy theory and government lies as truth. — Paul Craig Roberts

A half-truth does more mischief than a whole lie. — Ivan Panin

Sometimes lies are more dependable than the truth. — Orson Scott Card

Why do I write? I write to entertain my friends and to exasperate our enemies. To unfold the folded lie, to record to truth of our time, and, of course, to promote esthetic bliss. — Edward Abbey

I'm not a stickler for truth. To me, lying in poetry is much more fun. I'm against lying in life, in principle, in any other activity except poetry. — Charles Simic

Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth. — Theresa Breslin

A lie that is half a truth is ever the hardest to fight. — Patricia Wentworth

What if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer's lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry? — E. E. Cummings

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie. — Samuel Johnson

The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it. — Orson Scott Card

People who say "no" right away are usually lying. A truthful person is perfectly capable of saying "no" but generally they stop and think about it first. And they add "sorry" or something like that. Maybe they come out with some questions of their own. It's human nature. They say, "Sorry, no, why, what happened? — Lee Child

A democracy survives when its citizens have access to trustworthy and impartial sources of information, when it can discern lies from truth. Take this away and a democracy dies. The fusion of news and entertainment, the rise of a class of celebrity journalists on television who define reporting by their access to the famous and the powerful, the retreat by many readers into the ideological ghettos of the Internet and the ruthless drive by corporations to destroy the traditional news business are leaving us deaf, dumb and blind. — Chris Hedges

See you tomorrow," he said, instead.
"All right." Then, impulsively, I asked, "Do you have a place to sleep tonight?"
"Sure," he said with a smile, and started off as if he had somewhere to be.
I could have bitten off my tongue because I pushed him into a lie. Once he started lying to me, it would be harder to get him to trust me with the truth. I don't know why it works that way, but it does - at least in my experience. — Patricia Briggs

Everyone's always making fun of him and calling him crazy behind his back, but I can kind of understand how someone would end up that way. I mean, if no one ever pays attention to you telling the truth, then it probably makes sense to try lying for a change. — Amy Reed

Lies are the greatest murder. They kill the Truth. — Socrates

All err the more dangerously because each follows a truth. Their mistake lies not in following a falsehood but in not following another truth. — Blaise Pascal

He that trusts in a lie, shall perish in truth. — George Herbert

Because we can't comprehend it, and that's what allows us to do it again. And it is the normal, it's the average person that can do this. Again, in an imaginary other universe, maybe we'd have done it. That's the terrible truth that lies at the heart of each of us; that imponderable, 'were I not Jewish, in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Germany, would I have gone down on the other side?' — Bob Geldof

100% of a Guru's marketing plan depends on you holding the belief that you are not enough; that you were created less equipped than necessary to fulfill your purpose. What if you let go of that belief and connected with the truth of your innate power to change and shape your life? You ARE enough. You CAN change and shape your own life. Anyone who tells you different is simply lying. Your life has immeasurable potentiality for greatness; act accordingly. — Steve Maraboli

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself. — Sydney J. Harris

A lie travels round the world while truth is putting her boots on. — Edgar Allan Poe

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. ( ... ) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman. — Milan Kundera

Are we willing to do for the truth what others are willing to do for a lie? — Walter Martin

There never was a liar that had not a spot in him where he could not help admiring truth. — Henry Ward Beecher

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

Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run. — Joseph Goebbels

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios. — Margery Allingham

Always be truthful and you will have fewer visits from regret, guilt or fear. — Suzy Kassem

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

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

If someone lies to you, be quick to forgive & they'll be more apt
to tell you the truth. — Marshall Sylver

Please explain to me why John Kerry sounds more dickish telling the truth than Bush sounds when he's lying. How is that possible? — Jon Stewart

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies. — John Hodgman

If parents don't want to hear the truth, children learn not to speak it. — Nikki Sex

The last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women's rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of small and hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women. This counterassault is largely insidious: in a kind of pop-culture version of the Big Lie, it stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's position have actually led to their downfall. — Susan Faludi

What was the use of trying to expound a truth, if the majority preferred a lie? — Marie Corelli

My own luck has been curious all my literary life; I never could tell a lie that anyone would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe. — Mark Twain

Trust grows when people see leaders translate their personal integrity into organizational fidelity. At the heart of fidelity lies truth-telling and promise-keeping. — Max De Pree

To stretch the truth is to tell a lie. — Robert Breault

Fiction is a web of lies that attempts to entangle the truth. And autobiography may well be the reverse: data tricked up and rearranged to invent a fictive self. — Nicholas Delbanco

The reason I talk to myself is because I'm the only one whose answers I accept. — George Carlin

It is time that we allow the Word of God, not the glamorized lies of Hollywood to become the cornerstone of our convictions, thoughts, and attitude. It is time we trade the emptiness of pop culture entertainment for the real-life adventure of a Christ-built existence. Only then will truth reign and rule in our lives. Only then will our lives make an eternal impact for His glory. — Leslie Ludy

Every time I see this one particular movie star on a magazine, I can't help but feel terribly sorry for her because nobody respects her at all, and yet they keep interviewing her. And the interviews are all the same thing.
They start with what food they are eating in some restaurant. "As _ gingerly munched her Chinese Chicken Salad, she spoke of love." And all the covers say the same thing: "_ gets to the bottom of stardom, love, and his/her hit new movie/television show/album."
I think it's nice for stars to do interviews to make us think they are just like us, but to tell you the truth, I get the feeling that it's all a big lie. The problem is I don't know who's lying. — Stephen Chbosky

A person can perhaps trust his eyes only to the amount of truth his heart does not mind to speak openly to the people to touch their souls in this selfish world full of lies. — Anuj

Don't be afraid to tell the truth. It's better to hurt someone by truth than to make them happy by lies. — Khaled Hosseini

If we assiduously cultivate our powers of exaggeration, perhaps we, too, shall obtain the Paradise of Liars. And there Raphael shall paint for us scores and scores of his manifestly impossible pictures ... and Shakespeare will lie to us of fabulous islands far past 'the still-vex'd Bermoothes,' and bring us fresh tales from the coast of Bohemia. For no one will speak the truth there, and we shall all be perfectly happy. — James Branch Cabell

All religions segregate also ... every religion asserts an order of truth and every other order is regarded as a lie. — R.J. Rushdoony

It is heartbreaking to me that I wasn't told the truth. I'm a very loyal guy, and I expect loyalty in return. And lying to me is not an exhibition of loyalty. — Chris Christie

Wars are started by the truth. Peace is proclaimed with lies. — Carol Grace

Slowly the truth is loading
I'm weighted down with love
Snow lying deep and even
Strung out and dreaming of

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world

We're threading hope like fire
Down through the desperate blood
Down through the trailing wire
Into the leafless wood

Night falling on the city
Quite something to behold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world
This disappearing world

I'll be sticking right there with it
I'll be by your side
Sailing like a silver bullet
Hit 'em 'tween the eyes
Through the smoke and rising water
Cross the great divide
Baby till it all feels right

Night falling on the city
Sparkling red and gold
Don't it just look so pretty
This disappearing world"~David Gray — David Gray

The gnosis of God is intermediate between immoderation, which is ascribing human characteristics to God, and negligence, which is denying any attributes to God ... The Truth lies in the balance between the two extremes. — Ibn Ata Allah

There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying. — Josh Billings

A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on. — Charles Haddon

I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage, threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was, thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there in the farthest rim of the universe. — Henry Miller

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

I am a minstrel. I know more about lying than you will ever discover. And minstrels know that sometimes lies are what a man needs most. In order to make a new truth of them. — Robin Hobb

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. — George Orwell