“Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.”

—  Samuel Butler

Falsehood, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so." by Samuel Butler?
Samuel Butler photo
Samuel Butler232
novelist 1835–1902

Related quotes

Holly Black photo

“Sometimes,” Sam says, “I can’t tell when you’re lying.”

“I never lie,” I lie.”

Holly Black book White Cat

Source: White Cat

Stephen King photo

“Never tell a lie when you can tell the truth.”

Stephen King book Mr. Mercedes

Source: Mr. Mercedes

Nicholas Sparks photo

“The secret is to know how to lie" he used to say, " and to know when someone's lying to you". His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Ilana Mercer photo

“The media lie so much, that when stuff happens that scares them, they no longer know where to turn for the truth.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

“The Camel-ate-my-homework Theory of Culpability,” http://www.ilanamercer.com/phprunner/public_article_list_view.php?editid1=803 WorldNetDaily.com, January 30, 2015. <br class="br">2010s, 2015

Jean Piaget photo

“The child who defines a lie as being a "naughty word" knows perfectly well that lying consists in not speaking the truth. He is not, therefore, mistaking one thing for another, he is simply identifying them one with another by what seems to us a quaint extension of the word "lie."”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

Orson Scott Card photo

“When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

Fernando Pessoa photo

“And the supreme glory of all this, my love, is to think that maybe this isn't true, neither may I believe it true.

And when lying starts giving us pleasure, let's speak the truth so that we lie to it.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

<p>Original: E a suprema glória disto tudo, meu amor, é pensar que talvez isto não seja verdade, nem eu o creia verdadeiro.</p><p>E quando a mentira comece a dar-nos prazer, falemos a verdade para lhe mentirmos.</p>
Ibid., p. 280
The Book of Disquiet

Jack Kerouac photo

“The reason I'm so bitter and, as I said, in anguish, nowadays, or one of the reasons, is that everybody's begun to lie and because they lie they assume that I lie too: they overlook the fact that I remember very well many things (of course I've forgotten some), but I do believe that lying is a sin, unless it's an innocent lie based on lack of memory, certainly the giving of false evidence and being a false witness is a mortal sin, but what I mean is, insofar as lying has become so prevalent in the world today (thanks to Marxian Dialectal propaganda and Comintern techniques among other causes) that, when a man tells the truth, everybody, looking in the mirror and seeing a liar, assumes that the truth-teller is lying too.”

Jack Kerouac book Vanity of Duluoz

Vanity of Duluoz (1968)

Nikki Sixx photo

“Which side of the blade is sharper? The lie or the truth? It all seems irrelevant when your jugular is sliced open and you’re lying in a pool of blood for the whole world to see.”

Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician

Hannah Arendt photo

“Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.”

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) Jewish-American political theorist

&quot; Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary http://books.google.com/books?id=iMIPAQAAMAAJ&amp;q=&amp;quot;Revolutionaries+do+not+make+revolutions+The+revolutionaries+are+those+who+know+when+power+is+lying+in+the+street+and+when+they+can+pick+it+up+Armed&amp;quot;&quot;. <br class="br">Crises of the Republic (1969)

Related topics