Quotes about lies
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“When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.”

“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Part I, Chapter 11, "Vom neuen Götzen" ("The New Idol"). Published in four parts between 1883 and 1891 Another translation: “But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen.”

“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”

“A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
Variant: A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

“… the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.”
Variant: A past tense, future perfect kind of night.
Source: White Teeth (2000)

Source: Ariel: The Restored Edition

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”
Source: The Truth

The Circus Animals' Desertion, III
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“I thought I'd lie on the floor and writhe in pain for awhile. It relaxes me.”
Jace to Alec, pg. 318
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)

“Care keeps his watch in every old man’s eye,
And where care lodges, sleep will never lie.”
Source: Romeo and Juliet

“Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, and time to die. Take it easy baby. Take it as it comes.”
Source: The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results

“Give me just enough information so that I can lie convincingly.”
“Sometimes you have to lie. But to yourself you must always tell the truth.”
Source: Harriet the Spy

“One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.”

Source: The Anti-Christ

“A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.”
Source: 1800s, Auguries of Innocence (1803), Line 53

“the lie is a condition of life.”

“All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?”
“A lie is an act of theft. It steals peoples faith and makes them resent themselves”
Source: The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer To The Heart Of God

“Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.”
Kunst ist Magie, befreit von der Lüge, Wahrheit zu sein.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 143
Minima Moralia (1951)

“All boys lie," Ben said. "And all girls lie, too. I lie. You lie. Don't pretend you don't.”
The Darkest Part of the Forest

“What is the truth, but a lie agreed upon.”

Source: The Crucible (1953)
Context: Danforth: Do you mean to deny this confession when you are free?
Proctor: I mean to deny nothing!
Danforth: Then explain to me, Mr. Proctor, why you will not let —
Proctor: [With the cry of his whole soul] Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!
“When you lose your temper, you lose a friend. When you lie, you lose yourself.”
Harvest Moon

“My biggest problem with modernity may lie in the growing separation of the ethical and the legal”
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms


The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.
Source: Leonardo's Notebooks
“Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.”
Source: Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

“Behind the perfection of a man's style, must lie the passion of a man's soul.”
Source: Reviews

“We have the right to lie, but not about the heart of the matter.”

1990s, Letter to John J. LaFalce (1992)

“No days you can borrow, no time you can buy.
No trust in tomorrow. It's a lie.”
Dreidel
Song lyrics, Don McLean (1972)

“To Live signifies to believe and hope — to lie and to lie to oneself.”
A Short History of Decay (1949)

183e, M. Joyce, trans, Collected Dialogues of Plato (1961), p. 537
The Symposium

Hat matt nicht die Augen, um sich sie auszureißen und das Herz zum gleichen Zweck? Dabei ist es ja nicht so schlimm, das ist Übertreibung und Lüge, alles ist Übertreibung, nur die Sehnsucht ist wahr, die kann man nicht übertreiben. Aber selbst die Wahrheit der Sehnsucht ist nicht so sehr ihre Wahrheit, als vielmehr der Ausdruck der Lüge alles übrigen sonst. Es klingt verdreht, aber es ist so.
Auch ist es vielleicht nicht eigentlich Liebe wenn ich sage, daß Du mir das Liebste bist; Liebe ist, daß Du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle.
Letter to Milena Jesenská (14 September 1920) http://www.abyssal.de/zitate/liebe.htm
Variant translations:
In this love you are like a knife, with which I explore myself.
Letters to Milena (1952)

Monologue, 19 February 2007 (U.S. Presidents Day)
The Tonight Show

Observation made privately, quoted by Time journalist Michael Kramer, The Case for Skepticism http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956604,00.html Time, (26 December 1988), in the context of doubts about PLO sincerity in hinting about recognition of Israel.
1980s

As quoted in The Romance and Drama of the Rubber Industry (1936) by Harvey Samuel Firestone
1930s

“He was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.”
"Brief Biographical Sketch of George Washington", The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, and Other Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=kqMDAAAAQAAJ (1867), ed. John Paul
Cited by: William E. Phipps, Mark Twain's Religion https://books.google.nl/books?id=y8e2zLpDngQC&pg=PA18&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIJTAB#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Mercer University Press, 2003, p. 18
Richard Locke, Critical Children: The Use of Childhood in Ten Great Novels https://books.google.nl/books?id=38erAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA12&dq=%22+He+was+ignorant+of+the+commonest+accomplishments+of+youth.+He+could+not+even+lie%22&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVpM31tsbMAhXFshQKHZ32Ci0Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=%22%20He%20was%20ignorant%20of%20the%20commonest%20accomplishments%20of%20youth.%20He%20could%20not%20even%20lie%22&f=false, Columbia University Press, p. 12

At the signing of the Little Arkansas Treaty (October 1865), as quoted in Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (1970), p. 100

The Life, Martyrdom, and Selections from the Writings of Thomas Cranmer https://books.google.com/books?id=FvNeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3&lpg=PA3&dq=The+Life,+Martyrdom,+and+Selections+from+the+Writings+of+Thomas+Cranmer+...&source=bl&ots=LbXiMjz5Zp&sig=0pi5SHuxfdt_YUoiJcxvLgr7x5E&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzmZL_wsfaAhVl6YMKHWubBkcQ6AEILDAB by Thomas Cranmer, p.139-142, (1809)

From his National Party Congress Speech in Durban on 15 August 1985

Nobel Lecture (1998)

1910s, California's Policies Proclaimed (Feb. 21, 1911)


Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

On the Decay of the Art of Lying http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/2572/pg2572.html