Quotes about lies

A collection of quotes on the topic of lie, truth, doing, use.

Best quotes about lies

“When you have something to say, silence is a lie.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

“I didn't lie! I just created fiction with my mouth!”

Homér Ancient Greek epic poet, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey

“We lie best when we lie to ourselves.”

Stephen King book It

Source: It (1986)

“Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

“Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

“She's mad, but she's magic. There's no lie in her fire.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Variant: she’s mad, but she’s magic.

“My lands are where my dead lie buried.”

Crazy Horse (1840–1877) Oglala Sioux chief

As quoted in National Geographic Vol. CX (July-December 1956), p. 487

“The first thing a man will do for his ideal is lie”

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (1883–1950) Austrian economist

Source: History of Economic Analysis, p. 43

“You can't lie to your soul.”

Irvine Welsh book Porno

Porno

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
Context: We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Quotes about lies

“Efforts will lie, but they will not be in vain.
Common variation: Effort may lie, but will never be in vain.”

Yuzuru Hanyu (1994) Japanese figure skater (1994-)

Other quotes, 2016
Original: (ja) 努力はウソをつく。でも無駄にはならない。
Source: Interview at the TCC Media Day in September 2016, aired 2 October 2016 in Mr．サンデーHERO’S 合体SP (Mr. Sunday Hero's Gattai Special) on Fuji TV.

Effort

“But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Truth

“Don't use the same mouth to lie and pray to God at the same time.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

God, Time

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.”

H.P. Lovecraft book The Nameless City

Variant: That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
Source: The Nameless City

Death, Dead

“I had a dream
I got everything I wanted
But when I wake up, I see
You with me

And you say
As long as I'm here
No one can hurt you
Don't wanna lie here
But you can learn to
If I could change the way that you see yourself
You wouldn't wonder why you hear
"They don't deserve you"”

Billie Eilish (2001) American singer-songwriter

"everything i wanted"
Singles (2017 - )

Dreams, Way, Learning, Change

“I can't judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Thinking, Time

“Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: "The Flaw in Paganism" in Death and Taxes (1931)

Love, Drink, Dance

“If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.”

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

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Life, Death, Peace, Beauty

“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller, but for want of an understanding ear.”

Stephen King book The Body

Different Seasons (1982), The Body

Love, People, Secret, Way

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Life, Hate, Friendship

“Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Truth

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

People, Wealth

“Its okay to tell a lie but believing in your own lies makes you the first victim, you become your own enemy which limits ability to think progressively towards success in life.”

Hamis Kiggundu (1984) Ugandan business magnate, Internet entrepreneur, philanthropist, and author

Its okay to tell a lie but believing in your own lies makes you the first victim, you become your own enemy which limits ability to think progressively towards success in life. Quoted from his first book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Success_and_Failure_Based_on_Reason_and_Reality, "Success and Failure Based on Reason and Reality" https://www.amazon.co.uk/SUCCESS-FAILURE-BASED-REASON-REALITY/dp/9970983903/ on Amazon, P.124 (July 2018)

Life, Thinking, Success

“The most confused we ever get is when we're trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Heart

“People always told me, 'Be careful what you do,
Don't go around breaking young girls' hearts,'
And momma always told me, 'Be careful who you love,
Be careful what you do, 'cause a lie becomes the truth.”

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

Thriller (1982)

Love, People, Truth, Girl

“I can imagine no greater bliss than to lie about, reading novels all day.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Ten Things I Love About You

Imagination, Reading

“Where does your security lie? Is God your refuge, your hiding place, your stronghold, your shepherd, your counselor, your friend, your redeemer, your saviour, your guide? If He is, you don't need to search any further for security.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

God, Search

“I know it's wrong - God, it's all kinds of wrong - but I just want to lie down with you and wake up with you, just once, just once ever in my life.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Life, God

“You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Life, World

“Sometimes, when you don't ask questions, it's not because you are afraid that someone will lie to your face. It's because you're afraid they'll tell you the truth.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Truth, Question

“A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

[The Autumn of the Patriarch, 2006 [1976], HarperCollins, 978-0-06-088286-0, 254] translated from El Ontoño del Patriarica (1975) by Gregory Rabassa

Love, Truth

“[…] no one had lived up to the roles they acted out in public. They wasted their years trying to live the lies that they had created for themselves. Only in private could they really be the demons, hypocrites and sinners they really were, and woe betide anyone who caught them at their game, because the only thing worse than a lie is a lie exposed.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Source: The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

Game

“Under the spreading chestnut tree I sold you and you sold me:
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Tree

“In my own country I am in a far off land.
I am strong but have no power.
I win all yet remain a loser.
At break of day I say goodnight.
When I lie down I have great fear of falling.”

Francois Villon (1431–1463) Mediæval French poet

Fear, Strong, Country

“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)

People, Passion

“Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

Letter to the Sovereigns (1503)

God, Truth, Justice, Hope

“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Compare sourced quote set forth above: "The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it." Attributed to Goebbels in Publications Relating to Various Aspects of Communism http://books.google.com/books?id=iLAnAQAAMAAJ&q=%22If+you+repeat+a+lie+often+enough,+people+will+believe+it.%22&dq=%22If+you+repeat+a+lie+often+enough,+people+will+believe+it.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=U4gPUvObG4qMyQHlhYAw&ved=0CGQQ6AEwCQ (1946), by United States Congress, House Committee on Un-American Activities. No reliable source has been located, and this is probably simply a further variation of the Big Lie idea. Variants: If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. If you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. If you repeat a lie long enough, it becomes truth. If you repeat a lie many times, people are bound to start believing it. Attributed in The Sack of Rome (2006) by Alexander Stille, p. 14, and also attributed in A World Without Walls: Freedom, Development, Free Trade and Global Governance (2003) by Mike Moore, p. 63. Misattributed

People

“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, Secret, Smile

“The girls show up wearing nothing. I can’t lie, I’m 16, I don’t hate it. I don’t have a girlfriend.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Vibe "Justin Bieber on Photo Shoots, Puberty, 2Pac & Drake" http://www.vibe.com/article/justin-bieber-photo-shoots-puberty-2pac-drake, 22 July 2010

Hate, Girl

“Money doesn’t mean anything to me. I’ve made a lot of money, but I want to enjoy lie and not stress myself building my bank account. I give lots away and live simply, mostly out of a suitcase in hotels. We all know that good health is much more important.”

Keanu Reeves (1964) Canadian actor, director, producer and musician

Money, Health

“Don’t turn the truth into a lie using self-fulfilling prophecies.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1996

Truth, Self-confidence

“Some friends are more significant and important than other friends. A special friend can often change your life for the better. You will know when this special person enters your life because of the respect you have for them. They will never lie or set you aside for someone or something else. You will have undying trust in this person that any words spoken will never find another ear. They always returned calls at the earliest possible time. They will check in often to see what is going on in your life and just talk. Your accomplishments will be applauded with praise and losses will never be repeated. This friend has you melted within their heart as you do theirs. When you find such a person be sure to return the love and understand they have gifted you and your life.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1983

Love, Life, Making love, Understanding

“Jealous People
will
Lie
Say
Write
Do
Listen
Look at
Ponder
Hate
Obsess
Boil up
Focus
Want to be You
Be Insecure
Try to knock you down anyway possible.

These people are Clowns in the Circus!

They are Hilarious, indeed.

Don't Greed off My Feed…”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Hate, People

“We came to see Jace. Is he alright?"
"I don't know," Magnus said. "Does he normally just lie on the floor like that without moving?”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

“If a society permits one portion of its citizenry to be menaced or destroyed, then, very soon, no one in that society is safe. The forces thus released in the people can never be held in check, but run their devouring course, destroying the very foundations which it was imagined they would save.

But we are unbelievably ignorant concerning what goes on in our country--to say nothing of what goes on in the rest of the world--and appear to have become too timid to question what we are told. Our failure to trust one another deeply enough to be able to talk to one another has become so great that people with these questions in their hearts do not speak them; our opulence is so pervasive that people who are afraid to lose whatever they think they have persuade themselves of the truth of a lie, and help disseminate it; and God help the innocent here, that man or womn who simply wants to love, and be loved. Unless this would-be lover is able to replace his or her backbone with a steel rod, he or she is doomed. This is no place for love. I know that I am now expected to make a bow in the direction of those millions of unremarked, happy marriages all over America, but I am unable honestly to do so because I find nothing whatever in our moral and social climate--and I am now thinking particularly of the state of our children--to bear witness to their existence. I suspect that when we refer to these happy and so marvelously invisible people, we are simply being nostalgic concerning the happy, simple, God-fearing life which we imagine ourselves once to have lived. In any case, wherever love is found, it unfailingly makes itself felt in the individual, the personal authority of the individual. Judged by this standard, we are a loveless nation. The best that can be said is that some of us are struggling. And what we are struggling against is that death in the heart which leads not only to the shedding of blood, but which reduces human beings to corpses while they live.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Source: nothing personal

Love, Life, Death, God

“Autumn is no time to lie alone”

Murasaki Shikibu book The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji

Autumn, Time

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies. If he only shows in his work that he has searched, and re-searched, for the way to put over lies, he would never accomplish anything.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Source: 1920s, "Picasso Speaks" (1923), p. 315.

Truth, Art, Way, Search

“If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to
wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.”

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

People

“Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.”

Tamora Pierce book Alanna: The First Adventure

Source: Alanna: The First Adventure

Truth, Lying

“Nobody even imagines how well one can lie about the state of one’s own heart.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

Imagination, Heart

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

Denis Diderot book Rameau's Nephew

Rameau's Nephew (1762)

Truth

“A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt as dangerous.”

Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist

Truth, Sense

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Truth, World, Courage, Parting

“To glorify democracy and to silence the people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.”

Paulo Freire book Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Source: Pedagogy of the Oppressed

People, Democracy, Silence

“The Guchkov government is held in a vice: bound by the interests of capital, it is compelled to strive to continue the predatory, robber war, to protect the monstrous profits of capital and the landlords, to restore the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and by the need for an abrupt change from tsarism to democracy, pressed by the bread-hungry and peace-hungry masses, the government is compelled to lie, to wriggle, to play for time, to “proclaim” and promise (promises are the only things that are very cheap even at a time of madly rocketing prices) as much as possible and do as little as possible, to make concessions with one hand and to withdraw them with the other. Under”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917

War, Peace, Democracy, Change

“Violence can only be concealed by a Lie, & the Lie can only be maintained by Violence…. Any man, who has once proclaimed Violence as his Method, is inevitably forced to take the Lie as his Principle”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

“It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

People, Personality

“Thank God I have the seeing eye, that is to say, as I lie in bed I can walk step by step on the fells and rough land seeing every stone and flower and patch of bog and cotton pass where my old legs will never take me again.”

Beatrix Potter (1866–1943) English children's writer and illustrator

God, Flowers

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

Life, Death, Peace, Beauty

“When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, 'I am going to produce a work of art.' I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.”

George Orwell Why I Write

Source: Why I Write

Books, Art, Drawing

“The sin underneath all our sins is to trust the lie of the serpent that we cannot trust the love and grace of Christ and must take matters into our own hands”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

Love, Christ

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Life, Children, People, World

“Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weigh life for life and see where the dead lie thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.”

Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902) German doctor, anthropologist, public health activist, pathologist, prehistorian, biologist and politician

1848 (quoted in Infections and Inequalities by Paul Farmer, page 1.

Life, Dead

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Truth

“Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex, and men need to have sex to feel loved, so the basic act of continuing the species requires a lie from one of you.”

Billy Connolly (1942) British comedian

An Audience With Billy - 1985

Love, Women, Men, Sex

“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions — especially selfish ones.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

"Peace and Violence" (1973).

Truth, Selfishness

“Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left
Christ where I lie, Christ where I sit, Christ where I arise
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.”

Saint Patrick (385–461) 5th-century Romano-British Christian missionary and bishop in Ireland

Variant:
Christ for my guardianship today: against poison, against burning, against drowning, against wounding, that there may come to me a multitude of rewards;
Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ over me,
Christ to right of me,
Christ to left of me,
Christ in lying down,
Christ in sitting,
Christ in rising up,
Christ in the heart of every person who may think of me,
Christ in the mouth of every person who may speak of me,
Christ in every eye, which may look on me!
Christ in every ear, which may hear me!
The Lorica of Patrick

Thinking, Heart, Christ

“You can’t be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 44e

Truth

“Living a lie the whole time — the lie that we're here to uplift our poor black brothers instead of to rob them … it corrupts us, it corrupts us in ways you can't imagine.”

George Orwell book Burmese Days

John Flory, Ch. III
Burmese Days (1934)

Way, Imagination, Time

“This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

The Psychology of the Unconscious (1943)

World, Beauty, Feeling, Understanding

“It has been my personal experience that the true flavour, the real fun, the continuous excitement of work lie in the process of doing it rather than in having it over and done with.”

A. P. J. Abdul Kalam book Wings of Fire

Source: Wings of Fire, p. 135.

Personality

“In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

As quoted in The Observer (29 December 1974).

Country

“No matter how fast a lie runs, the truth will someday overtake it.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

On lies and truth - "TB Joshua Rejects Courts Findings, Insists Building Collapse Was A Sabotage" http://citifmonline.com/2015/07/10/tb-joshua-rejects-courts-findings-insists-building-collapse-a-sabotage/ Citi FM, Ghana (July 10 2015)

Truth

“I frankly confess that, for myself, even if it could be, I should not want "free-will" to be given me, nor anything to be left in my own hands to enable me to endeavour after salvation; not merely because in face of so many dangers, and adversities and assaults of devils, I could not stand my ground; but because even were there no dangers. I should still be forced to labour with no guarantee of success.¦ But now that God has taken my salvation out of the control of my own will, and put it under the control of His, and promised to save me, not according to my working or running, but according to His own grace and mercy, I have the comfortable certainty that He is faithful and will not lie to me, and that He is also great and powerful, so that no devils or opposition can break Him or pluck me from Him. Furthermore, I have the comfortable certainty that I please God, not by reason of the merit of my works, but by reason of His merciful favour promised to me; so that, if I work too little, or badly, He does not impute it to me, but with fatherly compassion pardons me and makes me better. This is the glorying of all the saints in their God.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 313-314

God, Faith, Success

“THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

Lecture: "Off the Time Track" (June 1952) as quoted in Journal of Scientology issue 18-G, reprinted in Technical Volumes of Dianetics & Scientology Vol. 1, p. 418.

People, Books, Way

“One could say I was goofy somewhere, and maybe even outed someone, but not that I was an agent. Not that I wanted to betray anybody. (…) I swear, and damn me if I lie.”

Lech Wałęsa (1943) Polish politician, Nobel Peace Prize winner, former President of Poland

Można powiedzieć, że byłem gdzieś niezręczny, może nawet kogoś wsypałem, ale nie to, że byłem agentem. Nie to, że chciałem kogoś zdradzić (...) Przysięgam i niech mnie szlag trafi, jeśli kłamię. From the IV Copernican Debate at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, after Gazeta.pl http://miasta.gazeta.pl/torun/1,48723,6510083,Walesa__Przysiegam__ze_nie_bylem_agentem.html and TVN24 http://www.tvn24.pl/1,1596041,druk.html

“Christ is the genius of love and as such the most diametric antipole to Jewry, which is the incarnation of hate. … Christ was the first anti-Jewish opponent of stature. … The Jew is the lie that became flesh. He nailed Christ to the cross, and thus for the first time in history nailed the eternal truth to the cross.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Christus ist das Genie der Liebe, als solches der diametralste Gegenpol zum Judentum, das die Inkarnation des Hasses darstellt. … Christus ist der erste Judengegner von Format. … Der Jude ist die menschgewordene Lüge. In Christus hat er zum erstenmal vor der Geschichte die ewige Wahrheit ans Kreuz geschlagen.
Michael: a German fate in diary notes (1926)

Love, Hate, Truth, History

“With such confusions, don't it make you wanna scream?
Your bash abusing victimize within the scheme,
You try to cope with every lie they scrutinize,
Oh, brother, please have mercy,
'Cause I just can't take it!”

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

HIStory: Past, Present & Future, Book I (1995)

“I operate from a place of delusion-that’s what the Fame is all about… I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

. "The Rise of Lady Gaga." by Brian Hiatt, in Rolling Stone (11 June 2009): 57-61.

People, Truth, Fight

“La terre, elle, ne ment pas [The earth, it does not lie].”

Philippe Pétain (1856–1951) French military and political leader

Speech (25 June 1940), quoted in Philippe Pétain, Discours aux Français, 17 juin 1940-20 août 1944 (Paris: Albin Michel, 1989), p. 66.

“Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

"The Red Association" http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/writings/ch05.htm (1870)

Lying, Fraud, Freedom

“The way the mathematics game is played, most variations lie outside the rules, while music can insist on perfect canon or tolerate a casual accompaniment.”

Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American cognitive scientist

Music, Mind, and Meaning (1981)

Music, Way, Game, Mathematics

“The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad.”

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

1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties

Justice, Law, Home

“These demagogic non sequiturs undercut conservative claims to value the truth. And that has policy consequences: the supposedly conservative Pence and company have been pushing the lie for a week now that the free market is a failure and case-by-case economic fascism from above is the solution to lost American jobs. When truth doesn't matter, lies about policy are sure to follow.”

Ben Shapiro (1984) American journalist and attorney

Is Truth Becoming Irrelevant to Conservatives? (December 5, 2016)

Truth, Failure

“As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relationships with this best and truest friend of mankind that death's image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling, and I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity…of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness. I never lie down at night without reflecting that —- young as I am — I may not live to see another day. Yet no one of all my acquaintances could say that in company I am morose or disgruntled.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) Austrian Romantic composer

Letter to Leopold Mozart (4 April 1787), from The Mozart-Da Ponte Operas by Andrew Steptoe [Oxford University Press, 1988, ISBN 0-198-16221-9], p. 84.

Death, God, Happiness, Learning

“No person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered”

Gamal Abdel Nasser (1918–1970) second president of Egypt

in the Holocaust
Source: [Satloff, Robert, Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach Into Arab lands, PublicAffairs, 2007, 163, 9781586485108]
Source: [Laqueur, Walter, The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press, 2006, 141, 9780195304299]

Personality

“That one mother [of victim] that gets on television all the time, who thinks I should get 33 injections, I think she ought to take 33 valiums and go lie down.”

John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994) American serial killer and torturer

Source: CBS 2 News interview (1992) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YqB_4N6erE

Thinking, Time

“God give us men. The time demands
Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office does not kill;
Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;
Men who possess opinions and a will;
Men who have honor; men who will not lie;
Men who can stand before a demagogue
And dam his treacherous flatteries without winking;
Tall men, sun-browned, who live above the fog
In public duty and in private thinking.”

Josiah Gilbert Holland Wanted

Wanted, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Men, God, Faith, Thinking

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Love, World, Sadness, Fear

“I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

1880s, 1884, Letter to Theo (Nuenen, Oct. 1884)
Context: I tell you, if one wants to be active, one must not be afraid of going wrong, one must not be afraid of making mistakes now and then. Many people think that they will become good just by doing no harm - but that's a lie, and you yourself used to call it that. That way lies stagnation, mediocrity.
Just slap anything on when you see a blank canvas staring you in the face like some imbecile. You don't know how paralyzing that is, that stare of a blank canvas is, which says to the painter, You can't do a thing. The canvas has an idiotic stare and mesmerises some painters so much that they turn into idiots themselves. Many painters are afraid in front of the blank canvas, but the blank canvas is afraid of the real, passionate painter who dares and who has broken the spell of 'you can't' once and for all.
Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. He wades in and does something and stays with it, in short, he violates, "defiles" - they say. Let them talk, those cold theologians.

People, Way, Thinking

“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.

Idea, Cheating

“For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.”

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

Letter to Larry Callen (14 July 1958), p. 133
1990s, The Proud Highway : The Fear and Loathing Letters Volume I (1997)
Context: I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively. … For words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order, if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words.

Life

“How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

"Blackstar"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)
Context: Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)

People, Angels, Time

“Some people say that the climate crisis is something that we all have created. But that is just another convenient lie. Because if everyone is guilty then no one is to blame. And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.”

Greta Thunberg book No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference

Teen activist tells Davos elite they're to blame for climate crisis, CNN https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/25/europe/greta-thunberg-davos-world-economic-forum-intl/index.html (25 January 2019) Cited in No One is Too Small to Make a Difference, Penguin Books, 2019, pages 17-18 (ISBN 9780141991740). 2019, World Economic Forum (January 2019)

Money, People, Making love, Decision

“I wanted so badly to lie down next to her on the couch, to wrap my arms around her and sleep. Not fuck, like in those movies. Not even have sex. Just sleep together, in the most innocent sense of the phrase. But I lacked the courage and she had a boyfriend and I was gawky and she was gorgeous and I was hopelessly boring and she was endlessly fascinating. So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.”

John Green book Looking for Alaska

Miles "Pudge" Halter about Alaska Young, p. 88
Looking for Alaska (2005)

People, Sex, Courage, Thinking

“Truth typically arrives when it’s unexpected. Those carrying a lie live with anticipation the truth will eventually smack them in the face. There is no need gaze over the shoulder, as truth doesn’t hide or require a disguise.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1984

Truth

“My heart is open to all who choose to enroll for exclusive membership. However, never betray, lie, act selfishly or speak ill of me when I am not present; for it shall be locked and you may never enter again.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1979

Heart

“You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering.”

Anne Rice book Pandora

Pandora (1998)

Silence, Suffering, Waiting

“The pure soul is a pure lie.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Soul

“It is shaming sometimes, how the body will not, or cannot, lie about emotions.”

Ian McEwan book On Chesil Beach

Source: On Chesil Beach

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Truth

“You can't pray a lie -- I found that out.”

Mark Twain book Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

“Amy's basically exploiting the sociopath's most reliable maxim. The bigger the lie, the more they believe it.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“It’s not a lie. It’s a gift for fiction.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director

“Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water, and when you're tired, go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Variant: In Buddhism, there is no place for using effort. Just be ordinary and nothing special. Eat your food, move your bowels, pass water and when you're tired go and lie down. The ignorant will laugh at me, but the wise will understand.
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Food, Understanding, Water

“To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.”

Eugene O'Neill The Iceman Cometh

Source: The Iceman Cometh

Life, Truth, World, Dreams

“I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

.
1900s
Context: Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views.

People, Freedom, Heart

“To deny one's own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one's own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Life, Soul

“Why should we rise because 'tis light?
Did we lie down because t'was night?”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

Light, Night