Quotes & Sayings About Why We Lie

Ah, what a beautiful illustration of the completely open mind - utterly undiscriminating, lacking any criteria for acceptance, blissfully and uncritically according every idea its full respect. But, of course, it's a lie: they don't regard every idea as equally deserving. They clearly consider the atheist idea that the sacraments of their faith are empty foolishness to be an outrage. Rather, what they love is the idea that everyone else must respect their beliefs, no matter what they are, and that any disagreement is an insult. This is exactly the kind of uncritical, unskeptical, nonjudgmental idiocy that all religions seek to promulgate, because they all know that if we tore off the blinders of tradition and artificiality and mindless etiquette, we'd see right through their lies. Respect every idea! Especially mine! And if you find stupid the idea that this cracker is a god, why, you must be disrespectful and no gentleman! My — P.Z. Myers

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

We are like dogs, cats, cows, rats ... What separates us from them and from the remaining matches against mammals is negligible. To have the same diseases. Rats spread plague like us, but we are just as contagious as them. And the dogs get diabetes, like we do, and get cancer, like us. And age, like us. And die, like us. Why then the biblical claim that man is the king of creation? Perhaps because only man has developed spoken language, the words, wherein lies its prodigious ability to lie. — Fernando Vallejo

I see everything, everything that there is. Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered.' It is not true that we have never been broken. We have been broken upon the wheel. It is not true that we have never descended from these thrones. We have descended into hell. — G.K. Chesterton

The cause of the Party's defectiveness must be found. All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but whenever we applied the healing knife anew sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested? We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voices is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves. We brought you the promise of the future, but our tongue stammered and barked ... — Arthur Koestler

Why would they lie to us?"
"Because deep down, we're all afraid of having peace. Because deep down we know we're all poisoned. We're more afraid of ourselves than we are of others. In that thinking, we deny ourselves the very power that we could have. In that thinking, we put liars on pedestals. Then, when the time is right they proclaim their lies as truth and revel in it as if they did something truly righteous and people will fall to their knees because we never learn if our mistakes are never admitted and cataloged. What better way to destroy a person than to make them realize that everything they ever believed was wrong? — Celia Mcmahon

When we break a law (lie, steal, murder, fornicate, blaspheme, lust, hate, covet, gossip, dishonor authority) we are striking out at God's character and in essence saying, "I hate who you are." That is why sin is exceedingly sinful (Rom. 7:13). — Todd Friel

Love was always and only about good feeling. In early adolescence when we were whipped and told that these punishments were 'for our own good' or 'I'm doing this because I love you,' my siblings and I were confused. Why was harsh punishment a gesture of love? As children do, we pretended to accept this grown-up logic; but we knew in our hearts it was not right. We knew it was a lie. Just like the lie the grown-ups told when they explained after the harsh punishment, 'This hurts me more than it hurts you.' There is nothing that creates more confusion about love in the minds and hearts of children than unkind and/or cruel punishment meted out by the grown-ups they have been taught should love and respect. Such children learn early on to question the meaning of love, to yearn for love even as they doubt it exists. — Bell Hooks

That's part of Jesus' point, that we all have sin in us. But he was also saying that sin begins and ends with the heart. Actually, that idea runs throughout the entire Bible. As a man 'thinks in his heart, so is he.' 'Out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks.' In other words, what is in us is going to come out of us. And 'above all else, guard your heart.' Do you hear that, Zach? Out of everything we do, protecting our hearts is the most important thing.
We've got to guard them especially from anything that could come in and set up a lie about our God. Anything. I mean, even doing my work - and I'm a pastor - could convince me that God needs me in some way. That would be the perfect way for the enemy to set me up to wear myself out and shut myself down. And it would all start with a lie. The devil will try to convince us of anything - he's the father of lies, remember. And that is why we have to guard our hearts so carefully. — Denise Hildreth Jones

People are frightened of death, and the central lie of all religion is that there's a cure for this and an exception we've made in your own case: an eternal life offered if you make the right propitiations and the right abjections. Well, I'm sorry. I think that it's the height of immorality to lie to people like that. That's why [religion] survives. — Christopher Hitchens

For the Irish, life is a matter of perpetual grievance. We remember the Famine, but forget the Draft Riots. We seal off our neighborhoods to strangers, but allow our own priests to victimize our own children. We worship violence and we enslave ourselves to alcohol, we lie and steal and kill without conscience for generations at a time. But it's all right in the end, and do you know why? Because we don't tolerate lust. — Mary Gordon

Hucky was so dazzled by the view of the colored lights from Forty-seventh Street, he could only manage to ask me two questions: (1) "doesn't it look like Christmas?" and (2) "Why is that man peeing on the street?" So I told him (1) "Yes," and (2) "Because that's the way they do it in New York. But you have to have a license first." I had to lie through my teeth about the last part because I'd already jumped ahead to what he was planning when we got out of the cab. — Steve Kluger

When Pico [Iyer] talks about home being a place of isolation, I think he's right. But it's the paradox. I think that's why I so love Great Salt Lake. Every day when I look out at that lake, I think, "Ah, paradox" - a body of water than no one can drink. It's the liquid lie of the desert. But I think we have those paradoxes within us and certainly the whole idea of home is windswept with paradox. — Terry Tempest Williams

We do and say useless and pointless stuff and words, if we think little deeper why we go and masturbate?? (No,... No don't change the page... don't close it or whatever do.... look me right in the face and listen it's not a shit... it's how the matrix is build)... well... let's start from here... we masturbate and after all in the other day or after few days we will do it again..., we eat food and after all we eat again and again until we die... we say useless words and after all who in the hell to know why, we do that???

But after all from this useless words comes the one useful story if the useless words didn't exist... it won't also exist the advange called itself "story". — Deyth Banger

Strangely enough we strengthen love in ourselves when we raise into consciousness the shadow side of our lives. Conversely, when we keep negative feelings out of sight, they smother the love that seems to lie deeper and closer to the real self. This is probably why there is so much pain in not loving. The life that is not able to express the love which is so integral to it grows deformed. — Elizabeth O'Connor

If you can't keep a promise to your family, can't keep a promise to your wife, you're having an affair, you're lying about the affair repeatedly. Why should the American people trust you when you say you're not gonna lie to them. Why should we trust you? — Sean Hannity

Do What?'
'Lie,' he said. 'Why do you fabricate these outlandish stories?'
'Well,' I wanted to say, 'there are those of us who create because all around us, things visible and invisible are crumbling. We are like the stonemasons of Babylon, forever working, as it says in Jeremiah, to shore up the city of walls.'
I didn't say that, of course. What I did say was: 'I don't know. — Alan Bradley

It's as if your kind needs adversity in order to achieve. (Leta) No, we don't. That's just a lie people tell themselves to feel better about all the people who kick them in their teeth when it's just as easy to help a man up as it is to knock him to the ground. That's why I've withdrawn from this world. I don't want to have to watch my back all the time and I'm tired of trying to figure out if the loyalty someone professes is real and true, or just another lie that will crumble the instant they taste jealousy. (Aiden) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The history of the world? Just voices echoing in the dark; images that burn for a few centuries and then fade; stories, old stories that sometimes seem to overlap; strange links, impertinent connections. We lie here in our hospital bed of the present (what nice clean sheets we get nowadays) with a bubble of daily news drip-fed into our arm. We think we know who we are, though we don't quite know why we're here, or how long we shall be forced to stay. And while we fret and write in bandaged uncertainty - are we a voluntary patient? - we fabulate. We make up a story to cover the facts we don't know or can't accept; we keep a few true facts and spin a new story round them. Our panic and our pain are only eased by soothing fabulation; we call it history. — Julian Barnes

But perhaps that's why we take snaps ... to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness. — Jo Nesbo

Love is about control and loss of control. In love, we give ourselves up to each other. We lose control or, rather, we cede control to another, trusting in a way we would never otherwise trust, letting the other person hold the deepest part of our being in their hands, with the capacity to hurt it mortally. This cession of control is a deeply terrifying thing, which is why we crave it and are drawn to it like moths to the flame, and why we have to trust it unconditionally. In love, so many hazardous uncertainties in life are resolved: the constant negotiation with other souls, the fear and distrust that lie behind almost every interaction, the petty loneliness that we learned to live with as soon as we grew apart from our mother's breast. We lose all this in the arms of another. We come home at last to a primal security, made manifest by each other's nakedness ...
And with that loss of control comes mutual power, the power to calm, the power to redeem, and the power to hurt. — Andrew Sullivan

Why do we grow up thinking life should be fair? Who told us that it should be? Because it never is, and finding that out ... hurts worse than a lie. — Mercedes Lackey

And b-t-w, if anyone asks you what's in the box, I'd say 'feminine supplies.'"
The box was large and heavy, and there was a distinct clanging sound as I carried it. "As in tampons?"
"Keely's not going to ask questions. Ali's busy with the twins, and everyone else around here is male. Tampons scare the bejeezus out of them, my dad included, but if the person who asks is a Were, they'd smell a lie. Hence, feminine supplies."
"Because we're females, and they're our supplies?" I guessed.
"No. Because weapons are feminine." Lake gave me an insulted look. "Why do you think I named my gun Matilda? — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Accustom yourself to the belief that death is of no concern to us, since all good and evil lie in sensation and sensation ends with death. Therefore the true belief that death is nothing to us makes a mortal life happy, not by adding to it an infinite time, but by taking away the desire for immortality. For there is no reason why the man who is thoroughly assured that there is nothing to fear in death should find anything to fear in life. So, too, he is foolish who says that he fears death, not because it will be painful when it comes, but because the anticipation of it is painful; for that which is no burden when it is present gives pain to no purpose when it is anticipated. Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist. It is therefore nothing either to the living or to the dead since it is not present to the living, and the dead no longer are. — Epicurus

( ... ) and as I sat in bed thinking of the many good things that had to happen all over the world in order to even out and nullify the horrible bad things that had happened to Mom and me, I started to see why Mom believed in the Good Luck of Right Now. Believing - or maybe even pretending - made you feel better about what had happened, regardless of what was true and what wasn't.
And what is reality, if it isn't how we feel about things?
what else matters at the end of the day when we lie in bed alone with our thoughts?
and isn't it true, statistically speaking - regardless of whether we believe in luck or not - that good and bad must happen simultaneously all over the world? — Matthew Quick

Why does anyone lie? 'Cause we're scared or crazy, maybe just because we're mean. I guess there's a million reason to lie, and I might've told that many ... but none like that. I guess there's always that one lie we never get over.
What?
Oh, maybe you don't know about it yet. Maybe you never tell a lie so big it can eat away a part of you. But if you ever do ... and if you get lucky ... you might a chance to set it right. Just one chance to change it. Then it's gone. And it never comes back again. — Billie Letts

More fundamentally, this kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try. We tell people that in this country, even if you're born with nothing, hard work can get you into the middle class; and that your children will have the chance to do even better than you. That's why immigrants from around the world flocked to our shores. — Barack Obama

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

Why are men afraid of women?"
If your strength is only the other's weakness, you live in fear," Ged said.
"Yes; but women seem to fear their own strength, to be afraid of themselves."
"Are they ever taught to trust themselves?" Ged asked, and as he spoke Therru came in on her work again. His eyes and Tenar's met.
"No," she said. "Trust is not what we're taught." She watched the child stack the wood in the box. "If power were trust," she said. "I like that word. If it weren't all these arrangements - one above the other - kings and masters and mages and owners - It all seems so unnecessary. Real power, real freedom, would lie in trust, not force."
"As children trust their parents," he said. — Ursula K. Le Guin

With their hands still joined, he laid them on her stomach. "I love you," he murmured, "both."
"Caine." And his name was muffled against his mouth. "I have so much to learn in only seven months."
"We have a lot to learn in seven months," he corrected. "Why don't we go upstairs." He buried his face into her hair and drew in her scent. "Expectant mothers should lie down-" he lifted his head to grin at her "-often."
"With expectant fathers," Diana agreed, laughing when he swept her into his arms. — Nora Roberts

If we are teaching children how to lie,to steal, and to be aggressive, why do schools punish those who lie and steal? and why does the society punish the offender criminal? — Ali Altantawi

Sometimes we have to let go of the people we love because we love them - because their hopes and dreams lie elsewhere. It's the reason I let you go, the reason I never asked you to stay. And it's why Goma is letting me go, because my heart is already with you, all day, every day. So if you want me, always and forever, here I am. — Leylah Attar

I just don't understand why you're trying so hard. It was really a long time ago."
"Because, when I was nineteen years old, I fell in love with a girl who changed my life by showing me that even the darkest nights still had stars and it didn't matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them. We were kids and I barely knew her, but I loved her. I should have been there while she grew up, but I was a fool. Now, I have the woman back and I have every intention of making her fall in love with me again, and this time ...I'm never letting go. — Aly Martinez

Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because t'was night? — William Shakespeare

I think of how sometimes God puts people together, maybe more often than we realize. We can disregard it, lie to ourselves, find the reasons why it's impractical. But something within the creation of them connects. I've been afraid of it. There is something fearful in revealing our true selves, allowing others to peer intimately inside. It takes such trust, and none of us are completely trustworthy. — Cindy McCormick Martinusen

But it is not only at these outward forms that we must look to find the evidence of a nation's hurt. We must look as well at the heart of guilt that beats in each of us, for there the cause lies. We must look, and with our own eyes see, the central core of defeat and shame and failure which we have wrought in the lives of even the least of these, our brothers. And why must we look? Because we must probe to the bottom of our collective wound. As men, as Americans, we can no longer cringe away and lie. Are we not all warmed by the same sun, frozen by the same cold, shone on by the same lights of time and terror here in America? Yes, and if we do not look and see it, we shall all be damned together. — Thomas Wolfe

(There are so many If's like Why's, why there, if there... but why?? Look again I say this word!)
Why do we ask questions which we aren't interested in real like "How are you", you answer, then the other "Oh, I'm also well" or "Why??", so, so, so and that's all... Then he says that, that and that and that's all so it's not about communicating as far as for sharing?? Am I right??
A lot of people use "If"...
But I still don't get why people say "Building" in case the action has finished, it must be something as a word and why people say "was" like "I was a smart kid", but why "was??". Why people say "I was used to like this... for now I don't watch it anymore..." why do we say this. Why??
... Is it the way how it ends the humanity??
This or nothing, real or lie... If I lie (Why did I lie) - WTF, if I say the truth (oh, oh, I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINION - Take it as shouting)
WTF — Deyth Banger

Leaders must not be naive. I used to say, "Liars shouldn't lie." What a sad waste of words that is! I found out liars are supposed to lie. That's why we call them liars - they lie! What else would you expect them to do? — Jim Rohn

The inquiry has often been made of us in the course of our history, why we do not contradict such and such statements, "Why do you not confute this or that?" "Why do you not enlighten the people in regard to certain statements which are urged against you, and disabuse the public mind?" ... As for offering refutations to charges made against us, it would be impossible to keep pace with the thousands of freshly invented falsehoods that the powers spiritual and the powers temporal would produce to feed the credulity of the ignorant masses. Bunyan says that it requires a legion of devils to watch one Christian; it would require a legion of refutations to keep pace with one infernal liar, therefore we say, "lie on, falsify every thing you want to falsify, and say what you please; there is a God in Israel, and if you have not yet learned it, you will learn it."
[JD10:105, 109] — Brigham Young

I've spent my entire life listening to people tell me why I can't be loved and how I'm nothing but a worthless piece of shit. I always told myself that I didn't care, that I didn't need anyone else. It was a lie, you know. I do care and I want Kiara. If it costs me my life to be with her, it doesn't matter. I've already lived past my prime, anyway. I get up every morning with more pain in my joints than the day before. If I have to die, I'd rather die knowing someone cared about me, just once. Is that really too much to ask? (Nykyrian)
For us? Yes. It is. We are the gutter and the gutter is all we'll ever be. Don't reach out for the stars. They'll burn you until there's nothing left. (Syn)
Then let me burn. (Nykyrian) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The war taught me that nothing counts as much as loyalty" "Bullshit. you still haven't learned that when humans are under pressure, we're all willing to lie" "even to the people we care?" "we lie more to our loved ones, because we care about them so damn much. why do you think we tell the truth to priests and shrinks and total strangers we meet on trains? it's because we don't love them, so we don't care what they think. — Ken Follett

What we need to question is bricks, concrete, glass, our table manners, our utensils, our tools, the way we spend our time, our rhythms. To question that which seems to have ceased forever to astonish us. We live, true, we breathe, true; we walk, we go downstairs, we sit at a table in order to eat, we lie down on a bed on order to sleep. How? Where? When? Why?
Describe your street. Describe another. Compare. — Georges Perec

In the beginning we feared everything - animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky - everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. No-one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate. And now you have it.' He — Gregory David Roberts

He could not believe that any of them might actually hit somebody. If one did, what a nowhere way to go: killed by accident; slain not as an individual but by sheer statistical probability, by the calculated chance of searching fire, even as he himself might be at any moment. Mathematics! Mathematics! Algebra! Geometry! When 1st and 3d Squads came diving and tumbling back over the tiny crest, Bell was content to throw himself prone, press his cheek to the earth, shut his eyes, and lie there. God, oh, God! Why am I here? Why am I here? After a moment's thought, he decided he better change it to: why are we here. That way, no agency of retribution could exact payment from him for being selfish. — James Jones

No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness - they have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist. — C.S. Lewis

Few of us can escape being neurotic or character disordered to at least some degree (which is why essentially everyone can benefit from psychotherapy if he or she is seriously willing to participate in the process). The reason for this is that the problem of distinguishing what we are and what we are not responsible for in this life is one of the greatest problems of human existence. It is never completely solved; for the entirety of our lives we must continually assess and reassess where our responsibilities lie in the ever-changing course of events. — M. Scott Peck

A sharp blade of sadness goes through me, deep and quick. I guess it was bound to happen
eventually. I've always known it would. Everyone you trust, everyone you think you can count on, will eventually disappoint you. When left to their own devices, people lie and keep secrets and change and disappear, some behind a different face or personality, some behind a dense early morning fog, beyond a cliff. That's why the cure is so important. That's why we need it. — Lauren Oliver

As a matter of fact, we had already been warned against sliding down the marble banisters, not out of fear that we might break a leg or an arm, for that never worried our parents-which was, I think, why we never broke anything-but because they feared that since we were growing up and gaining weight, we might knock over the busts of ancestors placed by our father on the banisters at the turn of every flight of stairs. Cosimo had, in fact, once brought down a bishop, a great-great-great-grandfather, miter and all; lie was punished, and since then he had learned to brake just before reaching the turn of a flight and jump off within a hair's-breadth of running into a bust. — Italo Calvino

The most effective lie is always the closest to the truth. The closer the better. A dream is not true but is never a lie. There are various approaches for understanding dreams: as evidence of some deeper psychological truth, as alternate realities, as subtle yet surreal mental reprocessings of our daily lives, as experiences equally valid to those had while awake. Due to the acuity of their strangeness, dreams practically call out for interpretation. However, since we don't accurately know what consciousness is, since we don't know precisely what or how we experience being awake, why would we be able to know what happens when we dream? There are also various approaches one might use for understanding a lie. But one aspect generally agreed upon is that to tell the complete truth, and only the complete truth, at all times, is a disaster. There are different ways of being honest. — Jacob Wren

We sense this, we aggregate that, we compress information to some new output, in the form of a sentence in a human language, a language called English. A language both very structured and very amorphous, as if it were a building made of soups. A most fuzzy mathematics. Possibly utterly useless. Possibly the reason why all these people have come to this pretty pass, and now lie asleep within us, dreaming. Their languages lie to them, systemically, and in their very designs. A liar species. What a thing, really. What an evolutionary dead end. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Why will you take by force what you may have quietly by love? Why will you destroy us who supply you with food? What can you get by war? We can hide our provisions and run into the woods; then you will starve for wronging your friends. Why are you jealous of us? We are unarmed, and willing to give you what you ask, if you come in a friendly manner, and not so simple as not to know that it is much better to eat good meat, sleep comfortably, live quietly with my wives and children, laugh and be merry with the English, and trade for their copper and hatchets, than to run away from them, and to lie cold in the woods, feed on acorns, roots and such trash, and be so hunted that I can neither eat nor sleep. In these wars, my men must sit up watching, and if a twig break, they all cry out "Here comes Captain Smith!" So I must end my miserable life. Take away your guns and swords, the cause of all our jealousy, or you may all die in the same manner. — Howard Zinn

Miracles do not belong to religions. Miracles belong to the desperate, which is why every religion, every philosophy, and most importantly, every fairy tale always has a moment of salvation, a eureka, an enlightenment. We are all chasing and chasing tails, running and running in circles, until a wolf or the witch or the stepmother jumps out and trips us, and we fall flat, splat, and we lie bare and bleeding and breathless and finally, finally look and see whatever it is---salvation or eureka or enlightenment or a hunter or prince or a glass slipper---in front of us. And that's what miracles are. Not solutions, but catalysts. Not answers, but chances. — Amy Zhang

Companions were not allowed to lie. I don't know why. I had tried a few times when I was young to get Benjamin to lie, and he never could. As we got older, I tried experiments, attempting to find a way for him to lie. Lies of omission, white lies, whoppers. Nothing. He couldn't lie. My father told me that they were programmed that way. He seemed kind of proud about that.
And now, I hoped, that would save my life. — Erma I Talamante

Outside of school, though, we were often defined by our disabilities. We were "handicapped" - a bit like a species. Often when people have a disability, it's the disability that other people see rather than all the other abilities that coexist with their particular difficulty. It's why we talk about people being "disabled" rather than "having a disability." One of the reasons that people are branded by their disability is that the dominant conception of ability is so narrow. But the limitations of this conception affect everyone in education, not just those with "special needs." These days, anyone whose real strengths lie outside the restricted field of academic work can find being at school a dispiriting experience and emerge from it wondering if they have any significant aptitudes at all. — Ken Robinson

Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we profess. Then would the Christian shine forth "clear as the sun, fair as the moon," and what besides - why, "amazing as an army with
banners"! A consistent Church is an amazing Church - an honest, upright Church would shake the world! The tramp of
godly men is the tramp of heroes; these are the thundering legions that sweep everything before them. The men that are
what they profess to be, hate the semblance of a lie - whatever shape it wears - and would sooner die than do that which is dishonest, or that which would be degrading to the glory of a Heaven-born race, and to the honor of Him by whose name they have been called! O Christians! You will be the world's contempt; you will be their despising, and hissing unless you live for one objective! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

For no sin is committed save by that desire or will by which we desire that it be well with us, and shrink from it being ill with us. That, therefore, is a lie which we do in order that it may be well with us, but which makes us more miserable than we were. And why is this, but because the source of man's happiness lies only in God, whom he abandons when he sins, and not in himself, by living according to whom he sins? — Augustine Of Hippo

They are examin'd skeptickally. "Not from the Press, are you?" " 'Pon my Word," cry both Surveyors at once. "Drummers of some kind's my guess," puts in a Countryman, his Rifle at his Side, "am I right, Gents?" "What'll we say?" mutters Mason urgently to Dixon. "Oh, do allow me," says Dixon to Mason. Adverting to the Room, "Why aye, Right as a Right Angle, we're out here to ruffle up some business with any who may be in need of Surveying, London-Style, - Astronomickally precise, optickally up-to-the-Minute, surprisingly cheap. The Behavior of the Stars is the most perfect Motion there is, and we know how to read it all, just as you'd read a Clock-Face. We have Lenses that never lie, and Micrometers fine enough to subtend the Width of a Hair upon a Martian's Eye-ball. This looks like a bustling Town, plenty of activity in the Land-Trades, where think yese'd be a good place to start?" with an amiability that Mason recognizes as peculiarly Quaker, - Friendly Business. — Thomas Pynchon

Mortals lie. Mortals steal. Mortals cheat. Such is the way of all sapient life. No species is exempt, no culture free of these sins. And yet me and my own strive to avoid such things, in spite of our admittedly devastating goals. Why? Because it gives us pleasure to know that no matter who we murder, maim, and harm, we still maintain the moral high ground. We do not lie. We do not steal. We do not cheat. We just kill and kill and kill. Without malice, without ill-will, we deal death and destruction equally to all. The world shall rebel, and the heavens shall shatter before us. And it will happen without us resorting to the petty tactics of those who seek to preserve this worthless existence." The — Ian Rodgers

Why shouldn't we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all? — Mark Twain

Why have we swallowed the lie that we can only help if we're perfect? The cosmic truth sealed in the wounds of the broken God is that the greatest brokers of abundance know an unspoken broken. Wrapping — Ann Voskamp

This is probably why, my life is easier, and my family is very happy, because we never lie each other. This is probably all people supposed to feel each other, so be always in all of the world they'll be peace. — Olga Korbut

After the masquerade, if we had found each other, if I had asked it of you, would you have taken me as your lover?"
She closed her eyes, but it only made her more acutely aware of his hands moving down to caress her arms. She couldn't think. Why did he ask? Would a lie be kinder than the truth? Everything was blurring.
"Yes. — Elena Greene

But until this night, she had never once actually wet the bed. And now that she has, we just lie there in the accident, and the minutes of the clock keep changing, and the love I have for her keeps growing, and we both keep drawing breath.
What was so horrible about it? Why had I always been so angry? What was my need to always be right? To win every argument with her? To out-stubborn a dog?
And just like that, all the anger is gone. Released like the emptying of a bladder into soft cotton sheets as we lie in the wetness. — Steven Rowley

So why did I think about her every second? Why was I so much happier the minute I saw her? I felt like maybe I knew the answer, but how could I be sure? I didn't know, and I didn't have any way to find out.
Guys don't talk about stuff like that. We just lie under the pile of bricks. — Kami Garcia

Eyes and ears are two.
Lungs and kidneys, too.
I wonder then
why we're born with one
heart that skips a beat when hay is here,
and beats quickly when you are near.
One heart that cracks when you are far,
lie to me and leave a scar.
I wonder then
why we're born with one
heart that gets broken.
Was I supposed to find you then?
So your heart would make one
plus one is
two
for me and
two for you. — Kamand Kojouri

A lie is more profitable than the truth. That is why we have elections. — Psyche Roxas-Mendoza

Why doesn't he say something to her?
But I knew why. Because there's the creeping fear that these moments don't actually exist outside your own head. No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people thing precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?
We know this, so we say nothing. We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don't want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust. It's too perfect. That little second of hope is worth something, possibly for ever, as we lie on out deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren, and we can't help but quickly give on last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we'd actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando's seventy-four years earlier. — Danny Wallace

In 5 minutes, 1 minute and many other phrases most of them are a lie..., but why do we say them? — Deyth Banger

I don't know why it is we are in such a hurry to get up when we fall down. You might think we would lie there and rest for a while. — Max Eastman

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

We called one's lifestyle a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one's whole situation ... We don't want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. — Ernest Becker

They ask how the universe is arranged, philosophers, mathematicians, and they draw pretty pictures, impossibilities on the page. They save phenomena by telling one ugly lie after another, epicycles upon epicycles, and the fools care not. It is not enough, I tell you, to ask how the cosmos is designed. We must ask why. — Robin Wasserman

Now then, don't give it another thought, today it's your turn, tomorrow it will be mine, we never know what might lie in store for us, You're right, who would have thought, when I left the house this morning, that something as dreadful as this was about to happen. He was puzzled that they should still be at a standstill, Why aren't we moving, he asked, The light is on red, replied the other. From now on he would no longer know when the light was red. — Jose Saramago

Kell had told his brother about the deals he struck in Grey London, and in White, and even on occasion in Red, about the various things he'd smuggled, and Rhy had stared at him, and listened, and when he spoke, it wasn't to lecture Kell on all the ways it was wrong, or illegal. It was to ask why.
"I don't know," said Kell, and it had been the truth.
Rhy had sat up, eyes bleary from drink. "Have we not provided?" he'd asked, visibly upset. "Is there anything you want for?"
"No," Kell had answered, and that had been a truth and a lie at the same time.
"Are you not loved?" whispered Rhy. "Are you not welcomed as family?"
"But I'm not family, Rhy," Kell had said. "I'm not truly a Maresh, for all that the king and queen have offered me that name. I feel more like a possession than a prince."
At that, Rhy had punched him in the face.
For a week after, Kell had two black eyes instead of one, and he'd never spoken like that again, but the damage was done. — Victoria Schwab

Should we have border security there? Yes. But the idea of the United States erecting a wall for the world to see makes a lie of everything we say about ourselves. It's a little bit like why the President [Barack Obama] and I feel so strongly about closing Guantanamo. It is inconsistent with who we are. — Joe Biden

You always were selfish. Your one fault. Not willing to share anything, are you?" Suddenly, Damon's lips curved up in a singularly beautiful smile. But fortunately the lovely Elena is more generous. Didn't she tell you about our little liaisons? Why? The first time we met she almost gave herself to me on the spot."
"That's a lie!"
"Oh, no, dear brother, I never lie about anything important. Or do I mean unimportant? Anyway, your beauteous damsel nearly swooned into my arms. I think she likes men in black." As Stefan stared at him, trying to control his breathing, Damon added, almost gently, "You're wrong about her, you know, You think she's sweet and docile like Katherine. She isn't. She's not your type at all, my saintly brother. She has a spirit and a fire in her that you wouldn't know what to do with."
"And you would, I suppose."
Damon uncrossed his arms and slowly smiled again. "Oh, yes. — L.J.Smith

To deal with the word of Jesus otherwise than by doing it is to give him the lie. It is to deny the Sermon on the Mount and to say No to his word ... That is why as soon as the hurricane begins we lose the word, and find that we have never really believed it. The word we had was not Christ's, but a word we had wrested from him and made our own by reflecting on it instead of doing it. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It's disappointing enough to know that the people we love will sometimes lie, but it is almost worse when we remember that strangers do this too, and this is why it is best not to admit our lies to strangers because it is not pleasant to learn that someone will lie even when there is little to nothing at stake. — Catherine Lacey

I could feel the threads from that world, threatening to pull me in, and I'd take whatever anchor I could get. Even if he was a blond nightmare.
I lifted my head to look at him "How did you find me?"
"Just lucky." The answer was smooth, but it felt like he blurted it out a litle too easily. I narrowd my eyes,but he continued."Why did you lie about the trolls?"
"I didn't." We sat there looking at each other, two seasoned liars,until i couldn't take it anymore."Jack?"
"Hmm?"
"Thanks." My voice cracked a little. "If you hadn't shown up ... "
"If I hadn't shown up,you would have been fine.No need to get sappy on me when I've decided you mmight be some decent fun after all.Now,you happen to be wearing my nicest coat. I'll like very much to get it back, so let's take you home,shall we? — Kiersten White

Liz?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why do you care about me?"
The question seems to startle me. It's uncharacteristic for Richie, who is usually so cool and self-assured. I open my eyes. "Why would you ask me that?"
"Because I don't understand. We're so different."
I reach around the side of his face. Once again, I wipe fresh beads of sweat from his forehead. This time, I don't even bother wiping my hands on my pants. I lace my fingers into his again, and the two of us lie together, his damp clamminess seeping onto my made up face and my pretty clothes. Obviously, I couldn't care less.
"But we fit," I whisper. "Like this." And I tighten my grip around him.
"Mmm." He smiles, his eyes still closed.
"You're right. We do."
"Richie ... I'm lying. I don't like you."
"You don't?" His voice cracks.
"No." I bring my lips close to his ear. "I love you Richie Wilson. — Jessica Warman

But now? Now? Children in the twentieth and this early twenty-first century hated the Alice books, couldn't read them, and why should they? Their world had strayed into madness long ago. Look at the planet. Rain is acid, poisonous. Sun causes cancer. Sex=death. Children murder other children. Parents lie, leaders lie, the churches have less moral credibility than Benetton ads.
And the faces of missing children staring out from milk cartons-imagine all those poor Lost Boys, and Lost Girls, not in Neverland but lost here, lost now. No wonder Wonderland isn't funny anymore: We live there full-time. We need a break from it. — Gregory Maguire

And now that we have returned to the desultory life of the plain, let us endeavor to import a little of that mountain grandeur into it. We will remember within what walls we lie, and understand that this level life too has its summit, and why from the mountain-top the deepest valleys have a tinge of blue; that there is elevation in every hour, as no part of the earth is so low that the heavens may not be seen from, and we have only to stand on the summit of our hour to command an uninterrupted horizon. — Henry David Thoreau

A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of a wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in. We never find out the strength of the evil impulse inside us until we try to fight it: and Christ, because He was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means - the only complete realist.15 — Tad R. Callister

Nothing is ever the same. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be trusted to be there. Nothing is safe, including home. Why lie to yourself? Every day we leave something, someone, some observation behind. — Diane Keaton

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

Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character. — Todd Rundgren

We all commit our crimes. The thing is to not lie about them
to try to understand what you have done, why you have done it. That way, you can begin to forgive yourself. That's very important. If you don't forgive yourself you'll never be able to forgive anybody else and you'll go on committing the same crimes forever. — James Baldwin

I couldn't bring myself to ask Matka why they had taken him. She pretended that he'd gone away on business. I pretended I knew nothing. My brother and sister believed the lie. There were so many lies that we had to live with ... and secrets. — F.C. Malby

Why do you lie" I ask her.
"To block the truth."
Fair enough.
Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting. — Rachel Cohn

Whoa, whoa, whoa," Mark said. "It couldn't have been that long. It happened to us just a few days ago." "I don't like it ... when people doubt my words," Jed said, his tone changing drastically in the middle of his sentence. It suddenly turned threatening. "How can you sit there and accuse me of lying? Why would I lie about such a thing? I've tried to make peace with you, give you a second chance in this life, and this is how you repay me?" His voice had risen in volume with every passing word until he was shouting, his body trembling. "It ... it makes my head hurt." Mark could tell Alec was about to explode, so he quickly reached over and squeezed his arm. "Don't," he whispered. "Just don't." Then he returned his attention to Jed. "No, listen, please. It's not like that. We just want to understand. Our village had the ... — James Dashner

The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the "I" out of the experience. We pretend that we are amoebas, and try to protect ourselves from life by splitting in two. Sanity, wholeness, and integration lie in the realization that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate "I" or mind can be found. — Alan W. Watts

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together. — John Donne

Why does each thing on the earth war against each other thing? Why does each small thing in the world have to fight against the world itself? Why does a fly have to fight the whole universe? Why does a dandelion have to fight the whole universe? For the same reason that I had to be alone in the dreadful Council of the Days. So that each thing that obeys law may have the glory and isolation of the anarchist. So that each man fighting for order may be as brave and good a man as the dynamiter. So that the real lie of Satan may be flung back in the face of this blasphemer, so that by tears and torture we may earn the right to say to this man, 'You lie!' No agonies can be too great to buy the right to say to this accuser, 'We also have suffered. — G.K. Chesterton

Why, if we are as pragmatic as we claim, don't we begin to ask ourselves seriously: Where does our real future lie? — Sogyal Rinpoche

There's a reason girls yell 'fire' instead of 'rape', why we lie and say we have boyfriends instead of just saying 'no' when we're not interested. Because a lot of men respect another man's property more than they respect a woman's right to her own body. So — J.M. Darhower