Quotes about cheating (306 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speeches

Justice , Truth

“I’m tired of the lies and the cheating, and the broken promises that were never meant to be kept.”

Sidney Sheldon The Doomsday Conspiracy

Source: The Doomsday Conspiracy

“I smile when I'm angry, I cheat and I lie.
I do what I have to do to get by.
But I know what is wrong and I know what is right,
and I'd die for the truth in my secret life.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"In my Secret Life"
Ten New Songs (2001)

Life , Truth , Lie , Secret

“People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live.”

Andrzej Sapkowski book The Last Wish

Source: The Last Wish (1993)

People , Feeling , Thinking

“This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.”

Malcolm X book The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Source: The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Life , Time

“Haven’t you ever noticed that people who win say it’s because the gods know they are in the right, but if they lose, it wasn’t the gods who declared them wrong? Their opponent cheated, or their equipment was bad.”

Tamora Pierce Squire

Source: Squire

God , People

“God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.”

Jean Paul Sartre book The Devil and the Good Lord

Act 10, sc. 4
The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)

Men , God , Solitude , Evil

“The record companies really do conspire against the artists. They steal. They cheat. They do whatever they can, especially the black artists.… Sony's Tommy Mottola is the president of the record division. He is mean. He is a racist, and he's very, very, very devilish.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Remarks at National Action Network headquarters (6 July 2002)

“Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Better than Sex (22 August 1994)
1990s
Context: Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it. That is addictive thinking. That is politics — especially in presidential campaigns. That is when the addicts seize the high ground. They care about nothing else. They are salmon, and they must spawn. They are addicts.

Lie , Idea

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway. If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway. For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

This is a variant or paraphrase of The Paradoxical Commandments, by Kent M. Keith, student activist, first composed in 1968 as part of a booklet for student leaders, which had hung on the wall of Mother Teresa's children's home in Calcutta, India, and have sometimes become misattributed to her. The version posted at his site http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com begins:
Misattributed

Forgiveness , God , People , Self-confidence

“Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.”

Emil M. Cioran book The Trouble With Being Born

The Trouble With Being Born (1973)
Source: The Trouble with Being Born

Death , Thinking , Time

“Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

“I can't abide people who go soft over animals and then cheat every human they come across!”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle in the Air

People , Animals

“Any game looks straight if everyone is being cheated at once.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

Source: The Long Walk

Game

“Oh, don't cry, I'm so sorry I cheated so much, but that's the way things are.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Variant: Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
Source: Lolita

Way , Cry

“When students cheat on exams it's because our school system values grades more than students value learning.”

Neil deGrasse Tyson (1958) American astrophysicist and science communicator

School , Learning

“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Pnin

Source: Pnin

Hate , People , Feeling , Happiness

“When you can't cheat the game, you'd best find a means to cheat the players.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Game

“It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Suffering

“Life cheats us with shadows.
We ask it for pleasure.
It gives it to us with bitterness
and disappointment in its train.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Life , Pleasure , Disappointment , Training

“Kayla Robinson, if you don't shut up I'll fly down there and suck every last bit of blood from your stupid cheating cow body!”

P. C. Cast book Marked

Source: Marked

Stupidity , Flying

“Once she remembered trying to box her own ears for having cheated herself in a game of croquet she was playing against herself, for this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

Source: Alice's Adventures In Wonderland And Through The Looking Glass

People , Game , Box

“The character I have in view when I say "smug vulgarian" is, thus, not the part-time philistine, but the total type, the genteel bourgeois, the complete universal product of triteness and mediocrity. He is the conformist, the man who conforms to his group, and he also is typified by something else: he is a pseudo-idealist, he is pseudo-compassionate, he is pseudo-wise. The fraud is the closest ally of the true philistine. All such great words as "Beauty," "Love," "Nature," "Truth," and so on become masks and dupes when the smug vulgarian employs them. … The philistine likes to impress and he likes to be impressed, in consequence of which a world of deception, of mutual cheating, is formed by him and around him.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lectures on Russian Literature

Lectures on Russian Literature (1982)

Love , Truth , World , Beauty

“It is in this sense that Franklin says, "war is robbery, commerce is generally cheating."”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Vol. I, Ch. 5, pg. 182 (on Benjamin Franklin)
(Buch I) (1867)

War , Sense

“The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable ways, though he has not a monopoly of them… He has a reputation for various small forms of cheating, and for practising oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable just within the strict letter of the law, when court and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit of it.”

Mark Twain book Concerning the Jews

Concerning the Jews (Harper's Magazine, Sept. 1899)

Law , Way

“I don't have a trace of moral scruple, when it comes to the state I feel completely free. It's committed such terrible crimes against us all, against our generation, that we have a right to anything. I'm not worried about doing it damage, we'll just be recovering some damages for our entire battered generation. Who taught me how to steal, who made me do it, if not the state? Commandeering, that's the word they used during the war, or expropriating — Versailles called it reclamation. Who taught us how to cheat if not the state — how else would we know what money saved up by three generations could become worthless in a mere two weeks, that families could be swindled out of pastures, houses, and fields that had been theirs for a hundred years? Even if I kill someone, who trained me to do it? Six months on the drill field and then years at the front! We have an excellent case against the state, by God, we'll win in every court. It can never pay off its terrible debt, never give back what it took from us. Once there might have been a reason to have some qualms, back when the state was a good custodian, thrifty, decent, proper. Now that it's behaved like a hoodlum, we have the right to be hoodlums too.”

Stefan Zweig book The Post Office Girl

The Post Office Girl (published posthumously in 1982)

Money , God , War , Family

“Normally its narrow streets were crowded with stalls, and people from all over the Carpet. They'd all be trying to cheat one another in that open-and-above-board way known as 'doing business.”

Terry Pratchett book The Carpet People

The Carpet People (1971; 1992)

People , Way , Business

“I can say with absolute certainty I do not cheat. I am not a magician.”

Uri Geller (1946) Israeli illusionist

Geller, Uri "Geller: I can bend metal " Guardian, Wednesday November 8, 2000 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4087777,00.html

“There is no cheating in nature and the simple unsought feelings of the soul. There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Truth , Feeling , Soul , Nature

“It is not merely that we want to see the game played fairly. We also want to see the rules changed, so that there shall be both less opportunity and less temptation to cheat, and less chance for some few people to gain a proﬁt to which either they are not entitled at all, or else which is so enormous as to be greatly in excess of what they deserve, even though their services have been great. We wish to do away with the proﬁt that comes from the illegitimate exercise of cunning and craft. We also wish to secure a measurable equality of opportunity, a measurable equality of reward for services of similar value. To do all this, two, mutually supplementary movements are necessary. On the one hand, there must be - I think there now is - a genuine and permanent moral awakening, without which no wisdom of legislation or administration really means anything; and, on the other hand, we must try to secure the social and economic legislation without which any improvement due to purely moral agitation is necessarily evanescent.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Wisdom , People , Exercises , Game

“I have neither time to live nor to write. I am therefore cheating my art by stealing a few evening hours to write this most inadequate and negligent reply to the courteous and elegant letters of yours.”

Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) Flemish painter

In a letter to his friend Peiresc, Dec. 1634 - LPPR, 393; as quoted by Simon Schrama, in Rembrandt's eyes, Alfred A. Knopf - Borzoi Books, New York 1999, p. 403
At a speed which was daunting even for someone of his facility, Rubens was asked to supply the designs for four stages and five triumphal arches in the city Antwerp. Though he could rely on his scholarly friends for help with the allegorical program and his workshop for assistance in fabricating them, he still became 'overburdened' with the work
1625 - 1640

Art , Time

“I want to say a word to the Brahmins, “In the name of God, religion, sastras you have duped us. We were the ruling people. Stop this life of cheating us from this year. Give room for rationalism and humanism.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, pp. 518 & 519.
Rationalism

Life , God , People , Religion

“I want the Brahmins to realize that the Dravidian people today are very much hating those who cunningly cheated them with absurdities. They are now aware of the particular community making a living by spreading the foolishness. People have begun to hate god, religion, caste, mythologies (puranas) and so on.”

Periyar E. V. Ramasamy (1879–1973) Tamil politician and social reformer

Veeramani, Collected Works of Periyar, p. 517.
Brahminism

God , Hate , People , Religion

“Gentlemen,
You have undertaken to cheat me. I won't sue you, for law is too slow. I'll ruin you.
Yours truly,
Cornelius Vanderbilt”

Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794–1877) American businessman, philanthropist, and tycoon

Said to be the entirety of a letter to Charles Morgan and C. K. Garrison, quoted in an obituary, "Commodore Vanderbilt's Life" (5 January 1877) New York Times. Stiles, in The First Tycoon (2009) doubts this. He notes that there is no earlier source, that Vanderbilt was no stranger to the courts, and that he never otherwise closed letters with "yours truly."
Disputed

Law

“MANY Men swallow the being cheated, but no Man could ever endure to chew it.”

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (1633–1695) English politician

Political, Moral, and Miscellaneous Reflections (1750), Miscellaneous Thoughts and Reflections

Men

“Teachers of children in the United States of America wrote this date on blackboards again and again, and asked the children to memorize it with pride and joy: 1492. The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Children , Imagination , Teachers , Joy

“The bonds that unite another person to ourself exist only in our mind. Memory as it grows fainter relaxes them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we would fain be cheated and with which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we cheat other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature that cannot emerge from himself, that knows his fellows only in himself; when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.”

Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time

Les liens entre un être et nous n'existent que dans notre pensée. La mémoire en s'affaiblissant les relâche, et, malgré l'illusion dont nous voudrions être dupes et dont, par amour, par amitié, par politesse, par respect humain, par devoir, nous dupons les autres, nous existons seuls. L'homme est l'être qui ne peut sortir de soi, qui ne connaît les autres qu'en soi, et, en disant le contraire, ment.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VI: The Sweet Cheat Gone (1925), Ch. I: "Grief and Oblivion"

Love , Friendship , People , Lying

“The face of "evil" is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: "Wouldn't you?" Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Introduction
Naked Lunch (1959)

People , Lie , Dogs , Way

“You cheated.’ ‘No, I exploited a weakness in my opponent. There is a difference.”

Christopher Paolini book Inheritance

Eragon and Arya
Inheritance (2011)

“You must remember always to give, of everything you have. You must give foolishly even. You must be extravagant. You must give to all who come into your life. Then nothing and no one shall have power to cheat you of anything, for if you give to a thief, he cannot steal from you, and he himself is then no longer a thief. And the more you give, the more you will have to give.”

William Saroyan book The Human Comedy

The Human Comedy (1943)

Life

“MALCOLM X: Freedom, justice and equality are our principal ambitions. And to faithfully serve and follow the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the guiding goal of every Muslim. Mr. Muhammad teaches us the knowledge of our own selves, and of our own people. He cleans us up--morally, mentally and spiritually--and he reforms us of the vices that have blinded us here in the Western society. He stops black men from getting drunk, stops their dope addiction if they had it, stops nicotine, gambling, stealing, lying, cheating, fornication, adultery, prostitution, juvenile delinquency. I think of this whenever somebody talks about someone investigating us. Why investigate the Honorable Elijah Muhammad? They should subsidize him. He's cleaning up the mess that white men have made. He's saving the Government millions of dollars, taking black men off of welfare, showing them how to do something for themselves. And Mr. Muhammad teaches us love for our own kind. The white man has taught the black people in this country to hate themselves as inferior, to hate each other, to be divided against each other. Messenger Muhammad restores our love for our own kind, which enables us to work together in unity and harmony. He shows us how to pool our financial resources and our talents, then to work together toward a common objective. Among other things, we have small businesses in most major cities in this country, and we want to create many more. We are taught by Mr. Muhammad that it is very important to improve the black man's economy, and his thrift. But to do this, we must have land of our own. The brainwashed black man can never learn to stand on his own two feet until he is on his own. We must learn to become our own producers, manufacturers and traders; we must have industry of our own, to employ our own. The white man resists this because he wants to keep the black man under his thumb and jurisdiction in white society. He wants to keep the black man always dependent and begging--for jobs, food, clothes, shelter, education. The white man doesn't want to lose somebody to be supreme over. He wants to keep the black man where he can be watched and retarded.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Mr. Muhammad teaches that as soon as we separate from the white man, we will learn that we can do without the white man just as he can do without us. The white man knows that once black men get off to themselves and learn they can do for themselves, the black man's full potential will explode and he will surpass the white man.
Playboy interview, regarding the ambition of the Black Muslims
Attributed

Love , Men , Hate , People

“It is just so with personal liberty. The unlimited freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed has been of use to this country in many ways, and we can continue our prosperous economic career only by retaining an economic organization which will offer to the men of the stamp of the great captains of industry the opportunity and inducement to earn distinction. Nevertheless, we as Americans must now face the fact that this great freedom which the individual property-owner has enjoyed in the past has produced evils which were’ inevitable from its unrestrained exercise. It is this very freedom - this absence of State ‘and National restraint - that has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. Any feeling of special hatred toward these men is as absurd as any feeling of special regard. Some of them have gained their power by cheating and swindling, just as some very small business men cheat and swindle; but, as a whole, big men are no better and no worse than their small competitors, from a moral standpoint. Where they do wrong it is even more important to punish them than to punish as small man who does wrong, because their position makes it especially wicked for them to yield to temptation; but the prime need is to change the conditions which enable them to accumulate a power which it is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise, and to make this change not only, without vindictiveness, without doing injustice to individuals, but also in a cautious and temperate spirit, testing our theories by actual practice, so that our legislation may represent the minimum of restrictions upon the individual initiative of the exceptional man which is compatible with obtaining the maximum of welfare for the average man.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, The Progressives, Past and Present (1910)

Men , Way , Feeling , Exercises

“Most actors possess an intuitive side. Actually, the further away I am from the character, the less work I have to do. It takes so much more energy to detach yourself from your own life references that might cross wires with your character's. I think it's cheating for me to ever use my life references in conjunction with my characters. It's my reaction transferred to the character, which isn't good. What I have to do is erase those things and then find something else. I can't stand in front of a camera and let anything of myself come through or I'm betraying the character's complete trueness. There are some actors who just use themselves. They can wear their ego on their sleeve and it looks great. I can't do that.”

River Phoenix (1970–1993) American actor, musician, and activist

US Magazine (1991)

Life , Thinking

“Cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.”

William S. Burroughs book The Western Lands

Source: The Western Lands (1987), ch. 2

“For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Woodburn Harris (25 February-1 March 1929), in Selected Letters II, 1925-1929 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 288-289
Non-Fiction, Letters
Context: About my own attitude toward ethics—I thought I made it plain that I object only to (a) grotesquely disproportionate indignations and enthusiasms, (b) illogical extremes involving a reductio ad absurdum, and (c) the nonsensical notion that "right" and "wrong" involve any principles more mystical and universal than those of immediate expedience (with the individual's own comfort as a criterion) on the other hand. I believe I was careful to specify that I do not advocate vice and crime, but that on the other hand I have a marked distaste for immoral and unlawful acts which contravene the harmonious traditions and standards of beautiful living developed by a culture during its long history. This, however, is not ethics but aesthetics—a distinction which you are almost alone in considering negligible. … So far as I am concerned—I am an aesthete devoted to harmony, and to the extraction of the maximum possible pleasure from life. I find by experience that my chief pleasure is in symbolic identification with the landscape and tradition-stream to which I belong—hence I follow the ancient, simple New England ways of living, and observe the principles of honour expected of a descendant of English gentlemen. It is pride and beauty-sense, plus the automatic instincts of generations trained in certain conduct-patterns, which determine my conduct from day to day. But this is not ethics, because the same compulsions and preferences apply, with me, to things wholly outside the ethical zone. For example, I never cheat or steal. Also, I never wear a top-hat with a sack coat or munch bananas in public on the streets, because a gentleman does not do those things either. I would as soon do the one as the other sort of thing—it is all a matter of harmony and good taste—whereas the ethical or "righteous" man would be horrified by dishonesty yet tolerant of course personal ways. If I were farming in your district I certainly would assist my neighbours—both as a means of promoting my standing in the community, and because it is good taste to be generous and accommodating. Likewise with the matter of treating the pupils in a school class. But this would not be through any sense of inner compulsion based on principles dissociated from my personal welfare and from the principle of beauty. It would be for the same reason that I would not dress eccentrically or use vulgar language. Pure aesthetics, aside from the personal-benefit element; and concerned with emotions of pleasure versus disgust rather than of approval versus indignation.

“To all these insanities will be added the most shameful—the intensified competition between male and female. We insist upon equal and full rights for women, but the servants of darkness will expel them from many fields of activity, even where they bring the most benefit. We have spoken about the many maladies in the world, but the renewed struggle between the male and female principles will be the most tragic. It is hard to imagine how disastrous this will be, for it is a struggle against evolution itself! What a high price humanity pays for every such opposition to evolution! In these convulsions the young generations are corrupted. Plato spoke about beautiful thinking, but what kind of beauty is possible when there is hostility between man and woman? Now is the time to think about equal and full rights, but darkness invades the tensed realms. However, all the dark attacks will serve a certain good purpose, for those who have been humiliated in Kali Yuga will be glorified in Satya Yuga. ...Let us remember that these years of Armageddon are the most intense, and one’s health should be especially guarded because the cosmic currents will increase many diseases. You must understand that this time is unique... It is near-sighted to think that if war is prevented all problems will be solved! There are those who think so and imagine that they can cheat evolution, not realizing that the worst war is in their own homes. However, there do exist places on Earth where evolution develops normally, and We are always there.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

286
Armageddon

Home , Time , Imagination , Hostility

“When someone cheats…you feel stupid
because you realize that
you were making decisions
based on a non-existent reality.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Stupidity , Reality , Decision , Feeling

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

Life

“It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Feeling

“If there was one thing worse than being cheated, it was being cheated by someone who referred to themselves in the third person.”

Chris Wooding (1977) British children's writer

Source: The Iron Jackal

Personality

“When you kill a man, you steal a life," Baba said. "You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. Do you see?”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Variant: When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
Context: There is only one sin, only one. And that is theft. Every other sin is a variation of theft.... When you kill a man, you steal a life. You steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness.

Life , Children , Truth , Lie

“I love the Olympics, because they enable people from all over the world to come together and--regardless of their political or cultural differences--accuse each other of cheating.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Source: Boogers Are My Beat: More Lies, But Some Actual Journalism!

Love , People , World

“Love has a way of cheating itself consciously, like a child who plays at solitary hide-and-seek; it is pleased with assurances that it all the while disbelieves.”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

Love , Way

“The story is even Bill Wilson, a founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, couldn't overcome the sex monkey on his back, and spent his sober life cheating on his wife and filled with guilt.”

Chuck Palahniuk (1962) American novelist, essayist

Life , Alcohol , Sex

“Never violate a woman, nor harm a child. Do not lie, cheat or steal. These things are for lesser men. Protect the weak against the evil strong. And never allow thoughts of gain to lead you into the persuit of evil.”

David Gemmell book White Wolf

Source: White Wolf

Men , Lie , Strong , Evil

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Standup Comic (1999)
Source: Annie Hall: Screenplay

Soul , Boy

“I covet truth; beauty is unripe childhood's cheat; I leave it behind with the games of youth.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Prose and Poetry

Truth , Youth , Beauty , Game

“Never forget that anticipation is an important part of life. Work's important, family's important, but without excitement, you have nothing. You're cheating yourself if you refuse to enjoy what's coming.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Source: Three Weeks With My Brother

Life , Family , Parting , Forgetting

“Lula had Eminem cranked up. He was rapping about trailer park girls and how they go round the outside, and I was wondering what the heck that meant. I'm a white girl from Trenton. I don't know these things. I need a rap
cheat sheet.”

Janet Evanovich book To the Nines

Source: To the Nines

Girl

“I cheat him, I deceive him, yet the world does not sink in sulphur-colored mists. Madness conquers. I can no longer put my mosaics together. I just cry and laugh.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

World , Color , Cry , Madness

“Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it… And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Variant: You see, I tired of constant fear, so I made a decision. Every day when I wake I tell myself that it will be my last. If you are not trying to hold on to time, you are not so afraid of losing it.
Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death , Feeling , Time , Joy

“He could cheat on me and he would never tell me, and he would think less and less of me for not figuring it out. He would see me across the breakfast table, innocently slurping cereal, and know that I am a fool, and how can anyone respect a fool?”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Fools , Thinking

“Once you've started cheating, does it really matter what your methods are?”

Sophie Kinsella book I've Got Your Number

Source: I've Got Your Number

“Would I cheat to save my soul?
No.
But to save my G. P. A.?
Yes.”

Julie Anne Peters Luna

Source: Luna

Soul

“Love and I once had a great relationship, but I fear we've broken up. It cheated on me, wrecked my heart, and then went on to date other people. A lot of other people. And I can't stand to watch it, since love's going to cheat on them too.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Love , People , Fear , Heart

“A curse on this game. How can you stick at a game when the rules keep on changing? I shall call myself Alice and play croquet with the flamingos. In Wonderland everyone cheats and love is Wonderland, isn't it?”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Source: Written on the Body

Love , Game , Change

“You think I'd cheat on you?" I demanded with all the innocent outrage I could muster.

"With another guy, no. With a cheeseburger… in a heartbeat.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

Guy , Thinking

“Yeah, and Mr. Cuddles is a jealous sort. He doesn’t share us well. (Geary)
Does this mean I’ll have to fight him? (Arik)
You’d never win. Mr. Cuddles cheats. You think he’s just a pushover teddy bear, but he’s vicious, I tell you. Vicious. (Geary)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: The Dream Hunter

Thinking , Fight

“I never once cheated on you. I never even looked at another girl when we were together.”

Conrad Fisher”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Girl

“I don't care if I pass your test, I don't care if I follow your rules. If you can cheat, so can I. I won't let you beat me unfairly - I'll beat you unfairly first.
- Ender”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

“For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Box

“Making love without noise is like playing a muted piano-fine for practice, but you cheat yourself out of hearing the glorious results.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Love , Making love

“Can a man who lies, cheats, steals, and sometimes does violence to other people be a man of honor?
Kolabati looked into his eyes. "He can if he lies to liars, cheats cheaters, steals from thieves, and limits his violence to those who are violent.”

F. Paul Wilson (1946) novelist

People

“To cheat oneself out of love is the most terrible deception; it is an eternal loss for which there is no reparation, either in time or in eternity.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Love , Loss , Time

“‎There's no way to cheat a sensualist like me, somebody who can die laughing for hours over the pattern of the carpet in a hotel lobby.”

Anne Rice book Memnoch the Devil

Source: Memnoch the Devil

Way

“It's not the cheating. It's the hunger for an alternative. The refusal to accept unhappiness.”

Tom Perrotta book Little Children

Source: Little Children

Hunger

“Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

World , Parting , Selfishness

“How wonderful to know someone who was bad and dishonorable and a cheat and a liar, when all the world was filled with people who would not lie to save their souls and who would rather starve than do a dishonorable deed!”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

People , Lie , World , Soul

“And then, if you make it to bedtime, you feel the joy of cheating death out of one more day," she said. "Do you see?”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor the Overlander

Source: Gregor the Overlander

Death , Feeling , Joy

“Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Life , Pleasure , Happiness

“Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Between The Tides

Lying

“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) Spanish artist

Quote from People, 27 September 1976
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980

Art , Drawing

“Rose, I cheat at cards and buy liquor for minors. But I would never, ever force you into something you don't want.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

“We value virtue but do not discuss it. The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Pt. 3
Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)
Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Faith

“If you are not learning while you’re earning, you are cheating yourself out of the better portion of your compensation.”

Napoleon Hill (1883–1970) American author

Learning

“Peace in international affairs: a period of cheating between periods of fighting”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Variant: Peace: A period of cheating between two periods of fighting.
Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Peace , Fight

“sometimes it’s okay to cheat on things - but don’t ever cheat on people. because once you start, it’s very hard to stop. you find out how easy it is to do.”

David Levithan book Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

People

“As W. C. Fields once said: a thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”

Steven D. Levitt (1967) American economist

Source: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

“All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity are easy. Stay away from easy.”

Scott Alexander (1963) American writer, director and producer

Evil

“CNN found that Hillary Clinton is the most admired woman in America. Women admire her because she's strong and successful. Men admire her because she allows her husband to cheat and get away with it.”

Jay Leno (1950) American comedian, actor, writer, producer, voice actor and television host

Women , Men , Strong , Success

“All the reading she had done had given her a view of life that they had never seen. If only they would read a little Dickens or Kipling they would soon discover there was more to life than cheating people and watching television.”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Life , People , Reading

“A man will find a single coin in the mud and talk about it for days, but when his inheritance comes and is accounted one percent less than he expected, then he will declare himself cheated.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

“Why do you think people cheat?," I asked.
"Because they're bored? Because they can? Because they're selfish and think they're entitled to anything they want? Because they don't think they'll get caught?”

Sarah Mlynowski (1977) Novelist

Source: Ten Things We Did

People , Thinking , Selfishness

“I never cheat. I practice Gamesmanship - the art of winning games without actually cheating.”

L.J. Smith The Forbidden Game

Source: The Forbidden Game

Art , Game

“The French regarded this as a betrayal. It was. They spoke of being cheated by their wartime allies. They were. Clemenceau whose outspoken sympathies for Britain and America (he had been a newspaper correspondent in the United States shortly after the Civil War, had learned American English and married an American) had earned charges from the Right before the war that he was an Anglo-Saxon "tool", was embittered and disillusioned. As the Premier who had pulled France together in the closing period of the war, he realized what so many Frenchmen tended to forget, that without British and American help the war could not in the end have been won. He saw too that without Anglo-American promises of military aid in the future it would be beyond France's power to repel the next German invasion. He had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. Now France had neither.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

War , Learning , Betrayal , Future

“For example, we've all heard this one. Four guys go down a trail. A grenade sails out. One guy jumps on it and takes the blast and saves his three buddies. Is it true? The answer matters. You'd feel cheated if it never happened. Without the grounding of reality, it's just a trite bit of puffery, pure Hollywood, untrue in the way all such stories are untrue”

Tim O'Brien book The Things They Carried

The Things They Carried (1990), How to Tell a True War Story

Way , Guy , Feeling , Reality

“A man's own self is the last person to believe in him, and is harder to cheat than the rest of the world.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

World , Personality

“Religious ritual invariably offers a sacrificial display of commitment to supernatural agents that is materially costly and emotionally convincing. Such ritual conveys willingness to cooperate with a community of believers by signaling an open-ended promise to help others whenever there is true need. These expensive and sincere displays underscore belief that the gods are always vigilant and will never allow society to suffer those who cheat on their promises. Such a deep devotion to the in-group habitually generates intolerance toward out-groups. This, in turn, leads to constant rivalry and unending development of new and syncretic religious forms.”

Scott Atran (1952) Anthropologist

Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 16
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)

God , Communication , Suffering , Help

“The State oppresses and the law cheats.
Tax bleeds the unfortunate.
No duty is imposed on the rich;
The rights of the poor is an empty phrase.
Enough languishing in custody!
Equality wants other laws:
No rights without duties, she says,
Equally, no duties without rights.”

Eugène Edine Pottier (1816–1887) French politician

L'État comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Égaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
The Internationale (1864)

Law

“The tendency was to sell families as units, if for no other reason [than] to keep the slaves contented. The gangs in transit were usually a cheerful lot, though the presence of a number of the more vicious type sometimes made it necessary for them all to go in chains. At the other extreme, when the Central of Georgia railroad company in 1858 equipped a Negro sleeping car to assist in the slave trade it set a standard not always maintained in a later generation. When on the block, the slave was as likely to hinder as to help in his sale. Some, out of a vain conceit in bringing a high price, would boast of their physical prowess, in which case an unwary purchaser would likely be cheated. Others would malinger, because of a grudge against owners or traders or in order to bring a low price and be put at less tiring labor. Dealers, also, adopted the tricks of horse traders to make their merchants more attractive -- the greasiest Negro was generally considered the healthiest.”

W. Cleon Skousen (1913–2006) ex FBI agent, conservative United States author and faith-based political theorist

The Making of America (1986)

Family , Cars , Sleep , Help

Quotes about cheating

Best quotes about cheating

Quotes about cheating