Good Lies Quotes

People need good lies. There are too many bad ones. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In this treacherous world
Nothing is the truth nor a lie.
Everything depends on the color
Of the crystal through which one sees it ~ Pedro Calderon De La Barca

Wouldst thou ever roam abroad? See, what is good lies by thy side. Only learn to catch happiness, for happiness is ever by you. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.
"The common good and the individual good rarely coincide ... "
Sure, I know, it's true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies. ~ Sergei Lukyanenko

Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive. ~ Tim Allen

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable. ~ William McIlvanney

Just remember all the good lies have an element of truth to them. ~ John J. Davis

I worship nothing. Not a good lie nor a dark one. If nature is proof of God's amazing creation then I have truly seen the light, and the light is black. Nature is genius at its most cruel and savage. No benevolent God could have come up with such an outrage. ~ Gary Numan

I do not believe in the Cinema verite. Sometimes a really good lie is better than any truth. ~ Werner Herzog

Damn it all, it's the first duty of a soldier - it's the first duty of all Englishmen - to be able to tell a good lie in answer to a charge. ~ Ford Madox Ford

When we move forward into our future, knowing and using the treasures within, then only good lies before us. We can know and affirm that everything that happens to us is for our highest good and greatest joy, truly believing that we can't go wrong. ~ Louise Hay

And however dark the skies may appear, And however souls may blunder, I tell you it all will work out clear, For good lies over and under. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Sometimes a lie builds until the truth does more harm than good ~ Luke Scull

Evil speaks in lies.
And the good know only one truth. But it's a lie, because there's always more than one truth ~ Steven Erikson

All good lies contained some truth. ~ Cristin Terrill

I was fighting it left all day, just enough to get myself in difficult positions to get up and down. The par 5s have been good to be all week, and the three places I missed, I didn't get good lies. ~ Darren Clarke

We who make stories know that we tell lies for a living. But they are good lies that say true things, and we owe it to our readers to build them as best we can. Because somewhere out there is someone who needs that story. Someone who will grow up with a different landscape, who without that story will be a different person. And who with that story may have hope, or wisdom, or kindness, or comfort. And that is why we write. ~ Neil Gaiman

I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness; he looked so deep I felt sure he'd see the truth. But I lied too well. I was lying with every nerve and fiber and everything I'd ever done ... I wanted him to find no good in me, and he didn't. There is none. ~ Philip Pullman

Someone ought to write a novel about me," said Lebedeva loftily. "I shouldn't care if they lied to make it more interesting, as long as they were good lies, full of kisses and daring escapes and the occasional act of barbarism. I can't abide a poor liar. ~ Catherynne M Valente

A lot of Congressmen yesterday were upset when Kenneth Lay took the Fifth. Lay said it wasn't his fault. He had planned on testifying, but when Jeffrey Skilling testified, he took all the really good lies. ~ Jay Leno

The Social Contract is nothing more or less than a vast conspiracy of human beings to lie to and humbug themselves for the general Good. Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry. ~ H.G.Wells

There were lies we told to save ourselves, and then there were lies we told to rescue others. What counted more, the mistruth, or the greater good? ~ Jodi Picoult

Almost every comedy you see is about people making all wrong choices and making all the errors of judgement possible. Good comedy is when it works on this scale. Because it is psychologically very real. ~ Colin Firth

I drop the other Chest to the ground in shock. "What number are you? I'm Four."
He squints at me and then offers his hand. "I'm Nine. Good job staying alive, Number Four. ~ Pittacus Lore

Our obedience is God's pleasure when it proves that God is our treasure. This is good news, because it means very simply that the command to obey is the command to be happy in God. The commandments of God are only as hard to obey as the promises of God are hard to believe. The Word of God is only as hard to obey as the beauty of God is hard to cherish. ~ John Piper

I like you," she says, but I know this isn't what she really wants to say. "I like you too especially your tits." It's not what I want to say either, but fantasies need lies to keep them alive. ~ Bijou Hunter

A place is only as good as the people you know in it. It's the people that make the place. ~ Pittacus Lore

The people who are most discouraged and made despondent by the barbarity and stupidity of human behaviour at this time are those who think highly of Homo Sapiens as a product of evolution, and who still cling to an optimistic belief in the civilizing influence of progress and enlightenment. To them, the appalling outbursts of bestial ferocity in the Totalitarian States, and the obstinate selfishness and stupid greed of Capitalist Society, are not merely shocking and alarming. For them, these things are the utter negation of everything in which they have believed. It is as though the bottom had dropped out of their universe. The whole thing looks like a denial of all reason, and they feel as if they and the world had gone mad together.

Now for the Christian, this is not so. He is as deeply shocked and grieved as anybody else, but he is not astonished. He has never thought very highly of human nature left to itself. He has been accustomed to the idea that there is a deep interior dislocation in the very centre of human personality, and that you can never, as they say, 'make people good by Act of Parliament', just because laws are man-made and therefore partake of the imperfect and self-contradictory nature of man. Humanly speaking, it is not true at all that 'truly to know the good is to do the good'; it is far truer to say with St. Paul that 'the evil that I would not, that I do'; so that the mere increase of knowledge is of very little help in the struggle to outl ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

This siren, this goat-footed bard, this half human visitor to our age the hag-ridden and enchanted woods of Celtic antiquity. One catches in his company that flavour of final purposelessness, inner responsibility, existence outside or away from our Saxon good and evil, mixed with cunning, remorselessness, love of power. ~ John Maynard Keynes

The mark of a good officer, Wegener repeatedly told his youngsters, was willingness to admit he had something yet to learn. ~ Tom Clancy

Erah Graesin had a silky, low voice. It was reputed to be sexy, but then, everything about Terah Graesin was supposed to be sexy. Kylar didn't see it. Oh, she was pretty. She had a wide mouth, full lips, and the kind of figure that was unattainable for the majority of noblewomen who spent their days doing nothing more strenuous than issuing orders to the servants. Maybe it was that she was a little too self-consciously good-looking. She wore lots of makeup - expertly applied and subtle, but lots - and had tweezed her eyebrows down to tiny lines. The truth was, she held herself like he ought to admire her, and it pissed him off. What pissed him off more was that to look her in the eye with his disguise, he had to stare straight at her admittedly perky breasts. Dammit, why were breasts so intriguing? ~ Brent Weeks

You're out there, Lespere. It's all over. It's just as if it had never happened, isn't it?"
"No."
"When anything's over, it's just like it never happened. Where's your life any better than mine, now? Now is what counts. Is it any better? Is it?"
"Yes, it's better!"
"How?"
"Because I got my thoughts, I remember!" cried Lespere, far away, indignant, holding his memories to his chest with both hands.
And he was right. With a feeling of cold water rushing through his head and body, Hollis knew he was right. There were differences between memories and dreams. He had only dreams of things he wanted to do, while Lespere had memories of things done and accomplished. And thus knowledge began to pull Hollis apart in slow, quivering precision.
"What good does it do you?" he cried to Lespere. "Now? When a thing's over it's not good any more. You're no better off than me."
"I'm resting easy," said Lespere. "I've had my turn. I'm not getting mean at the end, like you. ~ Ray Bradbury

What I do say is that I can write verse, and that the writing of verse in strict form is the best possible training for writing good prose. ~ Philip Pullman

Art should be beautiful, not ugly. It should be uplifting and redemptive. Art reassures us that life is good and that, however bad things may look at the moment, everything works out for the best in the end. ~ Michael Swanwick

It's ok to be gifted at using people if you're using them for good. ~ Penny Reid

Where conflicting interests must be reconciled, the question shall always be answered from the standpoint of the greatest good of the greatest number in the long run. ~ Gifford Pinchot

I firmly disbelieve that one has to be a tortured soul to write good music. ~ P.J. Harvey

There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground.
It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up.
She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground.
She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone.
She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not any ~ Pamela Todd

Learning to write is not a linear process. There is no logical A-to-B-to-C way to become a good writer. One neat truth about writing cannot answer it all. There are many truths. To do writing practice means to deal ultimately with your whole life. ~ Natalie Goldberg

The social networking sites are such good way to keep in touch with your fans, it's quick and simple and it keeps your fans interested in what you're doing. ~ Melanie Fiona

If we don't harness their potential for good, their societies will continue to reap their capacity for evil. ~ Romeo Dallaire

Man's happiness today consists in "having fun." Having fun lies in the satisfaction of consuming and "taking in" commodities, sights, food, drinks, cigarettes, people, lectures, books, movies - all are consumed, swallowed. The world is one great object for our appetite, a big apple, a big bottle, a big breast; we are the sucklers, the eternally expectant ones, the hopeful ones - and the eternally disappointed ones. ~ Erich Fromm

It can even be thought that radium could become very dangerous in criminal hands, and here the question can be raised whether mankind benefits from knowing the secrets of Nature, whether it is ready to profit from it or whether this knowledge will not be harmful for it. The example of the discoveries of Nobel is characteristic, as powerful explosives have enabled man to do wonderful work. They are also a terrible means of destruction in the hands of great criminals who lead the peoples towards war. I am one of those who believe with Nobel that mankind will derive more good than harm from the new discoveries. ~ Pierre Curie

Mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. ~ George Eliot

If you want to look good in front of thousands, you have to out work thousands in front of nobody. ~ Damian Lillard

In the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., "No lie will last forever." We have to work at removing lies from our own hearts. And on the national level, we do this not because we blame our country, but because we love it. ~ Marianne Williamson

It is good to express a matter in two ways simultaneously so as to give it both a right foot and a left. Truth can stand on one leg, to be sure; but with two it can walk and get about. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I don't see how it's a risky thing to take a great part with a great director and a great script. That, to me, is not really a dangerous, risky proposition. It's actually a really good choice. ~ Dennis Quaid

Good luck - it's always ready to use in case. ~ Oprah Winfrey

In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. ~ Brooks Atkinson

Don't all women feel the same? The only difference is how much we know we feel it, how in touch we are with our fury. We're all furies, except the ones who are too damned foolish, and my worry now is that we're brainwashing them from the cradle, and in the end even the ones who are smart will be too damned foolish. What do I mean? I mean the second graders at Appleton Elementary, sometimes the first graders even, and by the time they get to my classroom, to the third grad, they're well and truly gone -- they're full of Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and French manicures and cute outfits and they care how their hair looks! In the third grade. They care more about their hair or their shoes than about galaxies or caterpillars or hieroglyphics. How did all that revolutionary talk of the seventies land us in a place where being female means playing dumb and looking good? Even worse on your tombstone than "dutiful daughter" is "looking good"; everyone used to know that. But we're lost in a world of appearances now. ~ Claire Messud

If we keep on ignoring and leaving children to their own devices at home, they become latchkey kids, and trust me, the consequences of that are not good. ~ Eric Braeden

You can't force folks to have good sense, even if they're family. Maybe especially then. ~ Patricia C. Wrede

Just go along with things and let your mind move freely. Resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish what is within you - this is best. What more do you have to do to fulfill your mission? Nothing is as good as following orders (obeying fate) - that's how difficult it is! ~ Burton Watson

When you do the math and examine how much energy is produced per atomic union, you find that fusing anything to iron's twenty-six protons costs energy. That means post-ferric fusion* does an energy-hungry star no good. Iron is the final peal of a star's natural life. ~ Sam Kean

When parties in a state are violent, he offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile them. The method is this:
You take a hundred leaders of each party; you dispose them into couples of such whose heads are nearest of a size; then let two nice operators saw off the occiput of each couple at the same time, in such a manner that the brain may be equally divided. Let the occiputs, thus cut off, be interchanged, applying each to the head of his opposite party-man. It seems indeed to be a work that requires some exactness, but the professor assured us, "that if it were dexterously performed, the cure would be infallible." For he argued thus: "that the two half brains being left to debate the matter between themselves within the space of one skull, would soon come to a good understanding, and produce that moderation, as well as regularity of thinking, so much to be wished for in the heads of those, who imagine they come into the world only to watch and govern its motion: and as to the difference of brains, in quantity or quality, among those who are directors in faction, the doctor assured us, from his own knowledge, that "it was a perfect trifle. ~ Jonathan Swift

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him. We must not use the Bible as a sort of encyclopedia out of which texts can be taken for use as weapons. ~ C.S. Lewis

You do have the idea of being 'just good friends?'"
He gave her a sideways look. "For so high and honorable an estate," Roshaun said, " 'just' seems a poor modifier to choose. ~ Diane Duane

I may do some good before I am dead
be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story. ~ Thomas Hardy

Public opinion, the sum of private opinions, does matter, can matter often for good. ~ Sybille Bedford

That so many of the well fed young television-watchers in the world's most powerful democracy should be so completely indifferent to the idea of self-government, so blankly uninterested in freedom of thought and the right to dissent, is distressing, but not too surprising. "Free as a bird", we say, and envy the winged creatures for their power of unrestricted movement in all the three dimensions. But alas, we forget the dodo. Any bird that has learned how to grub up a good living without being compelled to use its wings will soon renounce the privilege of flight and remain forever grounded. ~ Aldous Huxley

Nah, Dad, I'm good. Please leave me in this hotel bedroom with my handsome boyfriend. And several of his relatives, and a very sharp weapon."
"Clearly I went badly wrong somewhere when raising you," said Dad. "Well, best to do down before Tomo gets into the vodka. ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

To have ego means to believe in your own strength. And to also be open to other people's views. It is to be open, not closed. So, yes, my ego is big, but it's also very small in some areas. My ego is responsible for my doing what I do - bad or good. ~ Barbra Streisand

This industry has been really good to me. It's been a great life. I'm not through yet. I'm ready when you are, Mr. DeMille. ~ Anthony Hopkins

To stay in Djemal's good graces, or to soften the punishment when that failed, the foreign community in Jerusalem most often looked to two men. One was the dashing consul from neutral Spain, Antonio de la Cierva, Conde de Ballobar, who, having assumed the consular duties of most all the European "belligerent" nations, was extraordinarily well informed and influential. ~ Scott Anderson

Envy is an ill-natured vice, and is made up of meanness and malice. It wishes the force of goodness to be strained, and the measure of happiness abated. It laments over prosperity, and sickens at the sight of health. It oftentimes wants spirit as well as good nature. ~ Jeremy Collier

Art is the ultimate luxury good, but one that can make you think, give a you a blast of beauty and enhance your life. Even if the work's made of plasticine. ~ Ben Elliot

From my great-grandfather: not to have attended schools for the public; to have had good teachers at home, and to realize that this is the sort of thing on which one should spend lavishly. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Every single person in the world has something good about them. You just have to look inside of yourself and focus on it. ~ Michelle McCool