Deceiving Quotes

Deceiving people was natural ... It had been my job for so long that lying to protect myself, or those I loved, was as easy as breathing. I'd promise Rachel that there would be no more lies, forgiving or not. When it came to her, there hadn't been, and there wouldn't be when she came back. But all bets were off until I found her. I would deceive anyone, lie about everything, and do anything to get her back. ~ Molly McAdams

I think I can deceive people. I'm like, the nice, sweet girl when you meet me. And I don't have any bad intentions. But I'm a bad girl too. ~ Alicia Silverstone

I have only in my life carried to an extreme what you have not dared to carry halfway, and what's more, you have taken your cowardice for good sense, and have found comfort in deceiving yourselves. So that perhaps, after all, there is more life in me than in you. ~ Michael Finkel

Looks can be deceiving. You can't always tell what's going on inside a person from outside. People put on a brave face when they're trying to get over heartbreak, but that doesn't mean they have. ~ Alison G. Bailey

Those who try to achieve success without hard work ultimately deceive themselves-or worse-deceive others. ~ Tim Cook

Derivatives serve practically no purpose except to enrich bankers through opaque pricing and to deceive investors through off-the-balance-sheet accounting. ~ James Rickards

Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance. ~ Oscar Wilde

Amusement allures and deceives us and leads us down imperceptibly in thoughtlessness to the grave ~ Blaise Pascal

Deception is parcel to ruling. I tell my enemies, my allies, and my subjects what they need to know, when I feel they need to know it. This philosophy tends to have some effects. A man cannot take it as his business to repeatedly deceive the world, without somehow deceiving himself. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Memory weaves and traps us at the same time according to a scheme in which we do not participate: we should never speak of our memory, for it is anything but ours; it works on its own terms, it assists us while deceiving us or perhaps deceives up to assist us. ~ Julio Cortazar

I apologize for lying to you. I promise I won't deceive you except in matters of this sort. ~ Spiro T. Agnew

Appearances do not deceive if there are enough of them. ~ Laura Riding

Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived. ~ Sissela Bok

Subjects have no greater liberty in a popular than in a monarchial state. That which deceives them is the equal participation of command. ~ Thomas Hobbes

A true master will not deceive an able disciple. You are hampered by the limits you set and no limit can be set on skill. ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman

You should have taken me with you, I whisper to him. Then I lean my head against his and begin to cry. In my mind, I make a silent promise to my brother's killer.
I will hunt you down. I will scour the streets of Los Angeles for you. Search every street in the Republic if I have to. I will trick you and deceive you, lie, cheat and steal to find you, tempt you out of your hiding place, and chase you until you have nowhere else to run. I make you this promise: your life is mine. ~ Marie Lu

In love, one always begins in deceiving oneself, and one always ends in deceiving others. ~ Oscar Wilde

Who wants to hear about brave deeds when he's ashamed of his own, and who likes an open, honest tale from someone he's deceiving? ~ Richard Adams

There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

I was always a liar. But one thing I failed to realize about being a liar is that you know when you are deceiving someone else, but when you deceive yourself you believe you are telling the truth. ~ Jack Gantos

People need to remember that a man who is deceptive deceives by hiding that he is deceptive. He is not going to openly validate that he is deceiving you because his aim is to deceive you. ~ Suzy Kassem

The human heart has so many crannies where vanity hides, so many holes where falsehood works, is so decked out with deceiving hypocrisy, that it often dupes itself. ~ John Calvin

While we are indifferent to our good qualities, we keep on deceiving ourselves in regard to our faults, until we come to look on them as virtues. ~ Heinrich Heine

Yet another video has emerged of MIT professor and Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber calling Americans 'stupid,' and bragging about how the Affordable Care Act's drafters had to deceive the public in order to pass the law. ~ Alexander Viets Griswold

Be not concerned about her heart, my heart: be content if the music is true, though the words are not to be believed; enjoy the grace that dances like a lily on the rippling, deceiving surface, whatever may lie beneath. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Many men think the same way about women, treating them as stars. They admire us from a distance, solely because of our appearance. And when some of them eventually decide to approach the ones they long to be with, they often get burnt. ~ Marcin Dolecki

Looks are deceiving," Risa says. "After all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent. ~ Neal Shusterman

Words dazzle and deceive because they are mimed by the face. But black words on a white page are the soul laid bare. ~ Guy De Maupassant

We are deceiving ourselves if we believe that a literary work written and published in a country where 70 per cent of the population is illiterate, can change the political and social life of the country..it is up to political organization..and not to romantic literature.. to change the present situation. ~ Zakaria Tamer

Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman ~ Oscar Wilde

It is unhappily true that much insincere Literature and Art, executed solely with a view to effect, does succeed by deceiving the public. ~ George Henry Lewes

The reason we bitterly hate those who deceive us is because they think they are cleverer than we are. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive. ~ Sissela Bok

One can tell a child everything, anything. I have often been struck by the fact that parents know their children so little. They should not conceal so much from them. How well even little children understand that their parents conceal things from them, because they consider them too young to understand! Children are capable of giving advice in the most important matters. How can one deceive these dear little birds, when they look at one so sweetly and confidingly? I call them birds because there is nothing in the world better than birds! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think each player has an individual style. Each is concerned with giving the best to his team, and I think my best talent is dribbling and setting up goal situations, giving an assist or deceiving one of the other team's players. ~ Ronaldinho

So you were going to rescue the Prince! Why did you pretend to run away? To deceive the Witch?"
"Not likely! I'm a coward. Only way I can do something this frightening is to tell myself I'm not doing it! ~ Diana Wynne Jones

From the outside looking in, everything looked completely ordinary. The problem was being on the inside, looking out. ~ Belle Malory

It is not only old and early impressions that deceive us; the charms of novelty have the same power. ~ Blaise Pascal

They who once engage in iniquitous designs miserably deceive themselves when they think that they will go so far and no farther; one fault begets another, one crime renders another necessary; and thus they are impelled continually downward into a depth of guilt, which at the commencement of their career they would have died rather than have incurred. ~ Robert Southey

The trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. ~ Hannah Arendt

If anyone thinks that Jews can steal into the land of their fathers, he is deceiving either himself or others. Nowhere is the coming of Jews so promptly noted as in the historic home of the Jews, for the very reason that it is the historic home. ~ Theodor Herzl

If we say that we have no sin,
We deceive ourselves, and there's no truth in us.
Why then belike we must sin,
And so consequently die.
Ay, we must die an everlasting death. ~ Christopher Marlowe

It is, perhaps, a debatable question, whether a person who has always been notoriously in the habit of lying, has a right to tell the truth; it is, of course, the only device by which he can deceive people. ~ George D. Prentice

Understand, you wretched of the earth, we should strive to improve what we can. Here. Right here, in Moldova. We can clean our own houses; fix our own roads. We can trim our own shrubs and works the fields. We can stop gossiping, drinking and loafing. We can become kinder, more patient, more tender with each other. We can stop ripping pages out of library books and spitting on a cleanly swept floor. Quit deceiving. Start living honest lives. Italy- the real Italy- is in us ourselves! ~ Vladimir Lorchenkov

Bush and Blair combined their efforts to deceive both nations in a carefully coordinated manner, more so than anyone is willing to point out in the media. ~ Bianca Jagger

They are talking about how we can't trust the faded women, women who can't be touched but can stand on the earth, which means they must be lying about something, they must be deceiving us somehow. ~ Carmen Maria Machado

No mighty trance, or breathed spell Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell. ~ John Milton

He who desires anything but God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably. ~ Philip Neri

Experience itself, to our own great loss and bane, affords us sad proof that Satan seizes as many opportunities of deceiving and destroying mankind as there are different moods and affections natural to the human character. Demonolatry, Nicholas Remy ~ Phillip W. Simpson

Looks can be deceiving." -Krone, Fate of the Sorceress- ~ Giselle Jeffries Schneider

Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfill the way that is in you. ~ Carl Jung

There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and a proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion." The rule seems to be that those who find no difficulty deceiving themselves are easily deceived by others. They are easily persuaded and led. ~ Eric Hoffer

In short, one who loves the illusion of the good is eventually won over to actually loving the good. But how can love of the illusion of the good lead to love of the good itself? If one loves the illusion of the good and enacts this illusion in social intercourse, one might come to appreciate its worth and to love the good itself for its own sake. Correlatively, from the point of view of the spectator, loving the illusion of the good in others may make us act politely in order to become lovable, which leads us to exercise our self-mastery, control our passions, and, eventually, to love the good for its own sake. In this sense, paradoxically, by deceiving others through politeness and social pretence, we in fact deceive ourselves and transform our pragmatic, polite behavior into virtuous behavior: by deceiving others through the pretence of virtue, we foster civil society, and in doing so, deceive ourselves by transforming our pretense of virtue into a disposition for virtue itself. Does not this line of thought recall Pascal's advice to non-believers who would like to believe, but cannot bring themselves to accomplish the leap of faith? "Kneel down, pray, act as if you believe, and belief will come by itself. ~ Slavoj Zizek

James 1:22 is the theme verse of the entire book of James. It says, But be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. ~ David Platt

There is nothing so delightful as the hearing, or the speaking of truth. For this reason, there is no conversation so agreeable as that of the man of integrity, who hears without any intention to betray, and speaks without any intention to deceive. ~ Plato

The art of governing mankind by deceiving them. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

Coffee is a lot like people. In many ways, it's deceiving. The sweetness that you smell as it brews is more often than not a fallacy. The scent of a dark roasted coffee bean promises you rich flavors with hints of chocolate and hazelnut, but if you're not used to coffee's deceptiveness, you're left with a bitter aftertaste dangling at the back of your throat. To those of us who are used to it- we've grown a fondness for that bitter taste. It's complex. It's teasing. It reminds us that most things in life are not consistently sweet with every sip. One morning, your coffee might brew mild with just a flirtation of nutty undertones, And the next morning, it might be pelting you in the face with those same nuts, leaving little stinging marks with each sip. It's moody. It's not easy to perfect. But when you get the perfect brew, it's rewarding. And that same perfection is not guaranteed tomorrow just because you managed it today. ~ Katana Collins

When it comes to human suffering, appearance is everything. ~ Nadja Sam

The computer-simulated dreamworld of the Matrix trilogy is a technological version of Descartes's evil demon. In essence it represents the idea of a mind (the Architect) more powerful than our own that is intent on deceiving us whenever, and however, it sees fit. ~ William Irwin

I detest those who deceive me... ~ Steve Berry

The important thing is to polish wisdom and the mind in great detail. If you sharpen wisdom, you will understand what is just and unjust in society and also the good and the evil of this world; then you will come to know all kinds of arts and you will tread different ways. In this manner, no one in this world will succeed in deceiving you. It is after this stage that you will arrive at the wisdom of strategy. The wisdom of strategy is entirely distinct. Even right in the middle of a battle where everything is in rapid movement, it is necessary to attain the most profound principle of strategy, which assures you an immovable mind. You must examine this well. ~ Miyamoto Musashi

Appearances can be so deceiving, such a poor measure of a person. Admonished the Savior, 'Judge not according to the appearance. ~ Thomas S. Monson

Neurosis has an absolute genius for malingering. There is no illness which it cannot counterfeit perfectly. If it is capable of deceiving the doctor, how should it fail to deceive the patient ~ Marcel Proust

Patience is all we have in a land where time is obsolete. I press on, armored stranger. I am not deceiving you. The willows have always grown silent in my wake. I see and feel your ailing mind and it worries me. The night that follows you grows stronger. You still have time to change. ~ H.S. Crow

I've seen men who thought they were brave turn out to be shameful cowards. Other people, who thought they were capable of the utmost self-sacrifice, proved to be hardened egotists. And the opposite, too - cowards doing things which needed toughness and unusual courage ... What does it all boil down to in the end? One must judge a man by what he does, and not by what he thinks he would do. Until a man faces the test, he can deceive himself endlessly. ~ Jerzy Andrzejewski

Moving along the upward spiral requires us to learn, commit, and do on increasingly higher planes. We deceive ourselves if we think that any one of these is sufficient. To keep progressing, we must learn, commit, and do-learn, commit, and do-and learn, commit, and do again. ~ Stephen Covey

The only rule Muslims know is to win. It does not matter how. All rules can be broken as long as they win the war. They can lie, they can deceive, they can break their treaties as Muhammad did, they can ambush or use terror, assassinate, massacre the children and bomb civilians. Muslims can even kill each other as long as this improves their chance of winning. ~ Ali Sina

It is so much in the nature of men to overreach and deceive one another, that their very sports and plays are founded on that principle. ~ Fulke Greville, 1st Baron Brooke

Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin. ~ Seneca The Younger

Who can I trust? You have to invest in somebody and chances are you're probably going to invest in somebody who's going to deceive you. I've been conned a couple of times, but now I'm a little more savvy. ~ Maggie Gyllenhaal

Maybe I'm deceiving myself. Perhaps I don't know him as well as I'd like to imagine. What does a person so willing to utterly remake himself hold inside his heart? Can I trust such a man? What motivates him?
In an instant she knew, and she felt a bit of relief.
Love. Love was what drove him. ~ David Bowles

It should not be surprising if people believe easily in a God who makes no demands, but this is not the God of the Bible. Satan has cleverly misled people by whispering that they can believe in Jesus Christ without being changed, but this is the Devil's lie. To those who say you can have Christ without giving anything up, Satan is deceiving you. ~ Billy Graham

Hope is but a charlatan that ceases not to deceive us. For myself happiness only began when I had lost it. ~ Nicolas Chamfort

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true. ~ John Ruskin

Sometimes what you think is true, what you think is safe and good, is actually evil in disguise. Evil is so enticing, so deceiving, that you don't know its evil until it's wrapped you up and caressed you as a lover. You gaze into its eyes, enraptured by the pretty words whispers softly in your ears, realzing to late that the pretty words were all just twisted lies ~ Quinn Loftis

It is not hard to deceive ministers, relatives and friends. But it is impossible to deceive Christ. ~ J.C. Ryle

One is never deceived; one deceives oneself. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Haven't you realized that pleasure, which is indeed certainly the one and only reason for the two sexes to come together, is nevertheless not enough to establish a relationship between them? And that though this pleasure is preceded by desire which draws people together, it is however followed by aversion which pushes them apart? It's a law of nature which only love can change. Can we feel love whenever we want? Yet love is always needed, which would be a dreadfully tiresome thing if it hadn't fortunately been realized that it's enough for just one of the partners to feel it, thereby halving the problem, and without even incurring any great loss; in fact, one party is happy to love, the other to please, which is actually a bit less exciting but which can be combined with the pleasure of deceiving and that evens things out, so everyone's happy. ~ Pierre-Ambroise Choderlos De Laclos

I have in my own life merely carried to the extreme that which you have never ventured to carry even halfway ; and what's more, you've regarded your cowardice as prudence, and found comfort
in deceiving yourselves. So that, in fact, I may be even more "alive" than you are. Do take a closer look! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Man is full of energy; it is up to him how to use it! You can use your energy to do harm to people or to produce art and science; or you can use it for chattering or for deceiving people! By looking at the human history, we can easily say that man is guilty of wasting his energy mostly for stupid things! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

For every man there are certain words that are as if closer and more intimate to him than any others. And often, unexpectedly, in some remote, forsaken backwater, some deserted desert, one meets a man whose warming conversation makes you forget the pathlessness of your paths, the homelessness of your nights, and the contemporary world full of people's stupidity, of deceptions for deceiving man. Forever and always an evening spent in this way will vividly remain with you, and all that was and that took place then will be retained by the faithful memory: who was there, and who stood where, and what he was holding
the walls, the corners, and every trifle. ~ Nikolai Gogol

Meditation requires courage. It requires the basic integrity, sincerity, respect towards your own being. At least don't deceive yourself. ~ Rajneesh

This is the most important thing the humans have taught me. The thing they're teaching us right now. You see, they are all strangers to each other. They live out their entire lives, never truly understanding one another, only making guesses, making mistakes, distorting, deceiving, misunderstanding each other. And yet, though they're permanently strangers, they choose sometimes to trust each other, care for each other so completely that they gladly die to let the other live--that they gladly change themselves to make the other person happy. ~ Orson Scott Card

Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well. ~ Philip K. Dick

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something. ~ Rene Descartes

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him. ~ Samuel Johnson

Am I capable of deceiving my friend? Julien asked himself peevishly. This being, for whom hypocrisy and an absence of all sympathy were the usual methods of protecting himself, could not bear, this time, the thought of the slightest trickiness in dealing with a man for whom he had friendly feelings. ~ Stendhal

When one is in love one begins by deceiving one's self. And one ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance." - Oscar Wilde ~ Ashton Cartwright

Hearts can deceive. Words can deceive. But eyes we should trust. ~ Cesare Borgia

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men , but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity. ~ Leo Tolstoy

In matters of religion, it is very easy to deceive a man and very hard to undeceive him. ~ Pierre Bayle

We never deceive for a good purpose: knavery adds malice to falsehood. ~ Jean De La Bruyere

Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction. ~ Bernard Baruch

Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

The senses do not deceive us, but the judgment does. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I think people deceive themselves about themselves, particularly as they get older. ~ Jeanette Winterson

To deceive gracefully is the very essence of social life. One must start by deceiving oneself, and make a lifelong practice of deceiving others; if one does it well enough, in time one might even become an artist, the greatest illusionists of all. ~ Elspeth Huxley

People compose the schedules they do out of the priorities they have; and someone who says otherwise is deceiving himself about what he really values. The same thing applies to money that applies to time. I make a practice of watching what people do, never what they say. Whatever is important, to anyone sane, he will make a place for it; people live out their values. Values are different in this respect from "ideals," which are typically vain and effete and thus exist mostly for the sake of promoting self-delusions. ~ Kenny Smith

There in the dark her memory was refreshed, and she succumbed to her earlier dreams. Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion. In equating physical beauty with virtue, she stripped her mind, bound it, and collected self-contempt by the heap. She forgot lust and simple caring for. She regarded love as possessive mating, and romance as the goal of the spirit. It would be for her a well-spring from which she would draw the most destructive emotions, deceiving the lover and seeking to imprison the beloved, curtailing freedom in every way.
Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye ~ Toni Morrison