6,640 Quotes About Lying

Your Word Is Valued More By Others Than Exceeded Promises

The lies that people tell in stories is what makes them so true.

I would wonder if the depravity in our world survives on the lie that our depth can’t overcome it.

Because we refuse to acknowledge something doesn’t mean that it’s not staring us right in the face.

Lies are a vacation from the self.

The point is, our minds aren't as private as we like to imagine. Other people have partial visibility into what we're thinking. Faced with the translucency of our own minds, then, self-deception is often the most robust way to mislead others. It's not technically a lie (because it's not conscious or deliberate), but it has a similar effect. "We hide reality from our conscious minds," says Trivers, "the better to hide it from onlookers.

The real promise in too many promises is a promise that I’m going to be disappointed.

Lying to ourselves is the ultimate betrayal.

The best I can do is to ‘pretend’ that I’m my own god. But in the pretending I have to pretend that I’m not pretending, and somehow that doesn’t sound very god-like to me.