"Lies and consequences." in The American Prospect (19 May 2002) http://prospect.org/cs/articles?article=lies_and_consequences&gId=6282
Context: To rationalize their lies, people — and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose — are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just. Clinton may have lied to preserve his power while telling himself that he was lying to protect “the people” who benefited from his presidency. Liars — especially liars in power — often conflate their interest with the public interest. (What’s good for General Motors is good for the United States.) Or they consider their lies sanctified by the essential goodness they presume to embody, like terrorists who believe that murder is sanctified by the godliness of their aspirations. Sanctimony probably engenders at least as much lying as cynicism. We can’t condemn lying categorically, but we should categorically suspect it.
“We Indians really should be better liars, considering how often we've been lied to.”
Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
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Sherman Alexie 82
Native American author and filmmaker 1966Related quotes
“Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.”
Source: Lying
Source: Democratic presidental debate at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin held on 15 Feb. 2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44506-2004Feb15_4.html.
As quoted in Land Your Dream Job : High-Performance Techniques to Get Noticed, Get Hired, and Get Ahead (2007) by John Middleton, Ken Langdon, and Nikki Cartwright
“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
“A man who lies to himself is the worst liar of all.”
Source: The Gate of Worlds (1967), Chapter 9 “To the Western Sea” (p. 162)
“Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.”
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”
Source: Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting
“An experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often quite picturesque liar.”
"The Private History of a Campaign That Failed", The Century, Vol. 31, No. 2, December 1885 http://books.google.com/books?id=-1UiAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA193. Anthologized in The American Claimant, and Other Stories and Sketches http://books.google.com/books?id=1T00Sc_cVYIC (1898)