A collection of quotes on the topic of liar, truth, man, making.
“There are no pessimists; there are only realists and liars.”
“When I was a little boy, they called me a liar, but now that I am grown up, they call me a writer.”
TIME (18 July 1983)
Book Two in 'Margarita', P/V, opening lines of Book Two
Variant: Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar’s vile tongue be cut out!
Source: The Master and Margarita (1967)
“She'll come back as fire
burn all the liars
leave a blanket of ash on the ground”
Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge on Seattle.
Song lyrics, In Utero (1993)
Speech to the Third Army (1944)
Context: Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.
Variant: Doubt thou the stars are fire
Doubt thou the sun doth move
Doubt truth to be a liar
But never doubt I love
Source: Hamlet
Source: Murder in Mesopotamia
"Lettre du Provincial" (21 December 1899)
Basic Verities, Prose and Poetry (1943)
As quoted in Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It (1955) edited by by Nat Shapiro and Nat Hentoff, p. 379
“The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.”
“A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.”
Mark Twain and I by Opie Read
Source: The Prisoner of Heaven
Source: The Collected Stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer
“No one believes a liar. Even when she's telling the truth.”
Source: Heartless
Big Lies in Politics http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2012/05/22/big_lies_in_politics/page/full, 22 May 2012.
2010s
“Success has always been a great liar”
“No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar”
“Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door.”
Source: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
“Whoever said that childhood is the happiest time of your life is a liar, or a fool.”
Source: The Midnight Palace
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
Source: The Collected Works
“A storyteller makes up things to help other people; a liar makes up things to help himself.”
Source: The Kings and Queens of Roam
Four Riddles, no. II
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)
“In either case the orator should bear clearly in mind throughout his whole speech what the fiction is to which he has committed himself, since we are apt to forget our falsehoods, and there is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory.”
Vtrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, mendacem memorem esse oportere.
Book IV, Chapter II, 91; translation by H. E. Butler
Compare: "Liars ought to have good memories", Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, chapter ii, section xv.
Alternate translation for "solent excidere quae falsa sunt": False things tend to be forgotten
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
“The saloon is a liar. It promises good cheer and sends sorrow.”
Source: Billy Sunday Quotes http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAfeTcqGTJA / www.famousquotes.com
Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220
Jace to Alec, pg. 138
The Mortal Instruments, City of Glass (2009)
The Two Pioneers
1890s, Quintessence Of Ibsenism (1891; 1913)
“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)
Source: Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011), Chapter 4, Page 92
Of Humanity -->
A short Schem of the true Religion
Source: On the Mystical Body of Christ, p.428
“The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!”
Rosa, Act Three, Scene Three
The Rose Tattoo (1951)
“The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.”
Quoted in Victor J. Stenger (1990), Physics and Psychics
Misattributed
Talk to schoolchildren in Oyster Bay, Christmastime (1898) http://www.trsite.org/content/pages/speaking-loudly, as quoted in The Bully Pulpit : A Teddy Roosevelt Book of Quotations (2002) by H. Paul Jeffers, p. 22
1890s
To Dr. Martin (9 December 1932). Quoted in "Hitler: The Missing Years", p. 190 by Ernst Hanfstaengl, John Toland - 1994
Source: Autobiography of Mark Twain, Vol. 3 (2015), p. 435
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)
Context: The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
“Liars … when they speak the truth they are not believed.”
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
As quoted in Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1899) by James Anthony Froude
'Where Do We Go From Here?" as published in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62; many statements in this book, or slight variants of them, were also part of his address Where Do We Go From Here?" which has a section below. A common variant appearing at least as early as 1968 has "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence..." An early version of the speech as published in A Martin Luther King Treasury (1964), p. 173, has : "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate..."
1960s
Context: The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
"Psych Sleuth : Margaret Singer has made history delving into the psychology of brainwashing", in The San Francisco Chronicle (26 May 2002) http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2002/05/26/CM67534.DTL&ao=all
2002
Context: Just look up to the sky and talk to God yourself. You don't need an organization to do that. …They're all the same, really, these groups — they prey on the most lonely, vulnerable people they can find, cage you with your own mind through guilt and fear, cut you off from everyone you knew before, and when they're done doing that, they don't need armed guards to keep you. You're afraid that if you leave, your parents will die, you will die, your life will be ruined. Flim-flam men, pimps, sharpsters — that's what they are. Liars. Tricksters. It's been the same ever since Eve got the apple, and I doubt it will ever change. A real religion is truthful, you can come or go from it if you wish. And most importantly, there is no one leader claiming he is a god. Big, big difference.
Exod. 23.21. And we must believe also that by his incarnation of the Virgin he came in the flesh not in appearance only but really & truly , being in all things made like unto his brethren (Heb. 2 17) for which reason he is called also the son of man.
Drafts on the history of the Church (Section 3). Yahuda Ms. 15.3, National Library of Israel, Jerusalem, Israel. 2006 Online Version at Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk/view/texts/normalized/THEM00220
Revolution by Number
Idler Magazine, Volume 1 http://books.google.com/books?id=vMYaAAAAYAAJ&q=exceptionally+good+liar#search_anchor|The
“I'm a liar. And I can't stop thinking about boys.”
Source: Pants on Fire
“People who write fiction, if they had not taken it up, might have become very successful liars.”
“I prefer to think that I'm liar in a way that's uniquely my own.”
Variant: Actually," said Jace, "I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own.
Source: City of Ashes
Source: Only the Good Spy Young
“We are liars. We are beautiful and privileged. We are cracked and broken.”
Source: We Were Liars
Source: Humboldt From 'The Gods and Other Lectures'
Variant: Love makes you a liar.
Source: City of Ashes
“All men are liars, said Roberta Muldoon, who knew this was true because she had once been a man.”
Source: The World According to Garp
“Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected.”
Source: Lying
On his plans for his autobiography Laterna Magica, as quoted in "Who is he really?" http://www.ingmarbergman.se/universe.asp?guid=4F72F9D3-43BB-405D-B42B-3D091B8FAF3A
Source: The Magic Lantern
“The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.”
"Helping the Girls with their Income Taxes" <!-- p. 72 -->
The Illiterate Digest (1924)
Context: The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has. Even when you make one out on the level, you don't know when it's through if you are a Crook or a Martyr.
“All liars… lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.”
Source: The Memory of Love
Source: Gone with the Wind
“Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar.”
Source: Only the Good Spy Young
“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
“LIBERTY!
FREEDOM!
DEMOCRACY!
True anyhow no matter how many
Liars use those words.”
“Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!”
Source: Anna Karenina
“All men are liars. All women are liars, too.”
Source: Burn for Me
Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before
Source: Envy
Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 15 : The Dæmon Cages
Context: Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.
“You who speak languages, you are such liars.”
