Quotes & Sayings About Repeated Lies

When I have suggested to my colleagues that we must take seriously Eichmann's repeated testimony to the effect that he learned from Heydrich in the fall of 1941 of Hitler's order for the physical destruction of the Jews, I have met with either embarrassed silence or open skepticism. How can I be so gullible? Don't I know that Eichmann's testimony is a useless conglomeration of faulty memories on the one hand and calculated lies for legal defense and self-justification on the other? From it we can learn nothing of value about what actually happened during the war, only about Eichmann's state of mind after the war. These are documents that reveal how Eichmann wished to be remembered, not what he did.

-- Perpetrator Testimony: Another Look at Adolf Eichmann, pages 4-5 — Christopher R. Browning

A lie repeated many times doesn't change the truth. — Frank Sonnenberg

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed. — Adolf Hitler

Questioned by a Companion about the best possible hijrah, the Prophet was to answer: "It is to exile yourself [to move away] from evil [abominations, lies, sins]."12 This requirement of spiritual exile was to be repeated in different forms. — Tariq Ramadan

It suggests to us that behavior of complex animals can change very rapidly, and not always for the better. It suggests that behavior can cease to be responsive to the environment, and lead to decline and death. It suggests that animals may stop adapting. Is this what happened to the dinosaurs? Is this the true cause of their disappearance? We may never know. But it is no accident that human beings are so interested in dinosaur extinction. The decline of the dinosaurs allowed mammals - including us - to flourish. And that leads us to wonder whether the disappearance of the dinosaurs is going to be repeated, sooner or later, by us as well. Whether at the deepest level the fault lies not in blind fate - in some fiery meteor from the skies - but in our own behavior. At the moment, we have no answer."

And then he smiled.

"But I have a few suggestions," he said. — Michael Crichton

My Lasher is powerful beyond your
dreams of a daimon, and he has learnt much.'
'Learned,' I repeated in amazement. 'How learned, Deborah, for he is merely a spirit, and they are
forever foolish and therein lies the danger, that in granting our wishes they do not understand the
complexity of them, and thereby prove our undoing. There are a thousand tales that prove it. Has this not
happened? How so do you say learned? — Anne Rice

The thing about memories wasn't that many of them inevitably faded, but that repeated recall of the ones you remembered burnished them into shining, gorgeous lies. — Dexter Palmer

Understood what the books and the generals always repeated: that armies did not kill each other, they broke each other, that the day would be won when one army believed it could not survive. A matter of deception, of conviction, of lies made true through performance. Like everything else. — Seth Dickinson

About 90 percent of what's out there in cyberspace is hearsay - or lies - and opinion, often misinformed opinion, and it's all repeated over and over again. — David Tang

Poor humanity, to saddle the gods with such a responsibility and throw in a vindictive temper. What griefs they hatch for themselves, what festering sores for us, what tears for our prosperity! This is not piety, this oft-repeated show of bowing a veiled head before a graven image; this bustling to every altar; this kow-towing and prostration on the ground with palms outspread before the shrines of the gods; this deluging of vow on vow. True piety lies rather in the power to contemplate the universe with a quiet mind. — Lucretius

Of my home Tatooine, I know full well That elsewhere lies my destiny, not here. Although my uncle's will is that I stay, My heart within me bursts to think on it For out among the spheres I wish to roam - Adventure and rebellion stir my blood. Those oft-repeated words of my mate Biggs I do believe - that all the world's a star. Beyond that heav'nly light I shall fly far! [Exit. — Ian Doescher

When we support or vote for candidates outside the two major political parties we are immediately lectured about wasting our vote or making it easier for the less desirable of the two major candidates to claim victory. These lies are repeated every election and they must be ignored. You never waste your vote if you vote your conscience. — Glenn Beck

I heard the stories and registered them perhaps the way we all, from within our detailed lives, perceive facts--that is, we do not perceive them at all until they have been repeated countless times and, even then, understand them only partially. So much information is lost that every small loss provokes inexplicable grief. Power must know this. Power must know how fatigued human nature is, and how unready we are to listen, and how willing we are to settle for lies. Power must know that, ultimately, we would rather not know. — Hisham Matar

But one thing I beg of you, look on me as your friend; and if you want some help, advice, or simply want to open your heart to someone- not now, but when things are clearer in your heart- think of me.' He took her hand and kissed it. 'I shall be happy, if I am able ... ' Pierre was confused.
'Don't speak to me like that; I'm not worth it!' cried Natasha ...
'Hush, hush your whole life lies before you,' he said to her.
'Before me! No! All is over for me,' she said, with shame and humiliation.
'All over?' he repeated. 'If I were not myself, but the handsomest, cleverest, best man in the world, and if I were free I would be on my knees this minute to beg for your hand and your love. — Leo Tolstoy

The truth is always the truth, although if a lie has been repeated enough, especially by a figure of authority, the general population will begin to see those lies as truth. — Joseph P. Kauffman

Because if we were all created idealists, then life was bound to be one relentless disappointment. But then, there was also music. We unlearned the lies with one hand and repeated them with the other. — Nikolai Grozni

A child's pleasure in listening to stories lies partly in waiting for things he expects to be repeated: situations, phrases, formulas. Just as in poems and songs the rhymes help to create the rhythm, so in prose narrative there are events that rhyme. — Italo Calvino

CHARACTER

Incomplete actions give birth to excuses. Excuses give birth to lies.
Repeated lies give birth to a bad character. — Sirshree

The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth. — Colum McCann

As Our Predecessors have many times repeated, let no man think that he may for any reason whatsoever join the Masonic sect, if he values his Catholic name and his eternal salvation as he ought to value them. Let no one be deceived by a pretense of honesty. It may seem to some that Freemasons demand nothing that is openly contrary to religion and morality; but, as the whole principle and object of the sect lies in what is vicious and criminal, to join with these men or in any way to help them cannot be lawful — Pope Leo XIII

Truth is only sweet to the ears only after a person is sick of drinking the vinegar of repeated failures. — Orrin Woodward

This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost ... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions. — Yukio Mishima

A truth told once is no match for a lie oft repeated. — James Rozoff

Curlicuing around the note allows a singer to mimic the sense of event in soul music, the sense that something is happening which has not happened before and cannot be repeated, by mimicking the apprehension of soul, those moments when singers dramatize their struggle to bring out of themselves what lies buried in them, inaccessible, until this moment, even to themselves. — Greil Marcus