The Liar Quotes

The aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure. ~ Oscar Wilde

I may have given up my library but a man should never be without his books. They provide a good means of staying out of, ah, trouble. ~ Den Patrick

Because we've been lied to and lied to, and it hurts to be lied to. It's ultimately just about that complicated: it hurts. It denies you respect for yourself, for the liar, for the world. Especially if the lies are chronic, systemic, if hard experience seems to teach that everything you're supposed to believe in's really a game based on lies. Young Voters have been taught well and thoroughly. You may not personally remember Vietnam or Watergate, but it's a good bet you remember 'No new taxes' and 'Out of the loop' and 'No direct knowledge of any impropriety at this time' and Did not inhale' and 'Did not have sex with that woman' and etc. etc. It's depressing and painful to believe that the would-be 'public servants' you're forced to choose between are all phonies whose only real concern is their own care and feeding and who will lie so outrageously with such a straight face that you just know they have to believe you're an idiot. So who wouldn't fall all over themselves for a top politician who actually seemed to talk to you like you were a person, an intelligent adult worthy of respect? ~ David Foster Wallace

Overcome the angry by non-anger; overcome the wicked by goodness; overcome the miser by generosity; overcome the liar by truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

Well the other thing about lying is that the liar is banking on two things when telling the lie. They are hoping that the person being lied to is gullible enough to believe, and it's also not even that they think they are gullible, it's that they know the person they are lying to well enough that they know the person won't push it any further because they know the person they are lying to wants to believe the lie. ~ Garry Crystal

The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious. ~ Adrienne Rich

Lucien had intimated that the king was an unholy creation; it stood to reason that he would create others in his image. Wasn't she one of the king's own experiments, evidence of his playing god? ~ Den Patrick

We all know that a lie needs no other grounds, than the invention of the liar; and to take for granted as truth, all that is alleged against the fame of others, is a species of credulity, that men would blush at on any other subject. ~ Jane Porter

No thanky-you; you can't overcome hatred with more hatred. Force can kill the liar but not the lie, the hater but not the hate, and the violent but not the violence. Hate begets hate, violence begets violence, and war begets war. ~ Joss Sheldon

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

The world is shaped by mankind's desires and fears. A war of hope against dread, waged upon a substrate that man himself made malleable though he has long forgotten how. All men and all men's works stand on feet of clay, waiting to be formed and reformed, forged by fear into monsters from the dark core of each soul, waiting to rend the world asunder. ~ Mark Lawrence

This disappearance, this annihilation is all a matter of appearances as seen through the eyes of the false self. The annihilation is only apparent, for the self being annihilated is itself only apparent. It is a self without God, that is, a self that can never exist. What is annihilated is our false self, our external self made absolute, the imposter, the mask (persona), the liar we think we are but are not. The annihilation therefore is not annihilation at all, for nothing real or genuine is annihilated. Rather, what is genuine is affirmed as our psychological, historical, social self and placed in its true relationship to God. All that is annihilated is the illusion of the self that cannot bear God's presence, save as an idol fabricated for the ego's own glorification. It is this "self" that is "annihilated" through God's merciful love. The annihilation is merciful for it, in fact, is the antithesis of annihilation. It is rather an obscure, inexplicable foretaste in faith of our final consummation as created persons. It is the mystery of the cross creatively at work in the foundations of consciousness, recreating our awareness that we might know God as he knows himself. ~ James Finley

Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a particular point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to have that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth.

On the other hand, a person who takes to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared, so far as is required, to fake the context as well. This freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying. It is more expansive and independent, with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the 'bullshit artist'. ~ Harry G. Frankfurt

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Conquer anger by love, evil by good; Conquer the miser with liberality, and the liar with truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

In a world of change and decay not even the man of faith can be completely happy. Instinctively he seeks the unchanging and is bereaved at the passing of dear familiar things. Yet much as we may deplore the lack of stability in all earthly things, in a fallen world such as this the very ability to change is a golden treasure, a gift from God of such fabulous worth as to call for constant thanksgiving. For human beings the whole possibility of redemption lies in their ability to change. To move across from one sort of person to another is the essence of repentance; the liar becomes truthful, the thief honest, the lewd pure, the proud humble. The whole moral texture of the life is altered. The thoughts, the desires, the affections are transformed, and the man is no longer what he had been before. ~ A.W. Tozer

Speak the truth and do it as much as you can, and the liar will be forced to adapt the lie until he can't anymore. ~ Robin Sacredfire

Lies build walls. Eventually the liar gets trapped inside these walls, and becomes unable to reason. Separation from reality is inevitable. ~ Ralph Cortes

The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him ... He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. ~ Harry Frankfurt

Lies and half-truths hurt not only the liar, but the people they love most. ~ Katherine Allred

I couldn't get my head around it. She'd lied to me! She had lied to me! Me! I was supposed to be the liar in this relationship! ~ Steve Toltz

A successful lie is not fueled by the liar; it is fueled by the willingness of the listener to believe. You can't expose a lie without first shattering the will to believe it. That is why leading people to truth is so much more effective than merely telling them. ~ Neal Shusterman

You can have a coke since you never did learn to be civilized and drink coffee. ~ Nora Roberts

The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities ~ Adrienne Rich

Lies come back, upon the liar, as such a coin turns towards the magnet. ~ Ehsan Sehgal

The liar looks up toward it, hoping against hope that the voices in his head have told him the truth. ~ Aleksandar Hemon

What is worse than doing evil, is being evil" (Ethics, p.67). To lie is wrong, but what is worse than the lie is the liar, for the liar contaminates everything he says, because everything he says is meant to further a cause that is false. The liar as liar has endorsed a world of falsehood and deception, and to focus only on the truth or falsity of his particular statements is to miss the danger of being caught up in his twisted world. This is why, as Bonhoeffer says, that "(i)t is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie" (Ethics, p.67). ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Most closed heavens for the Christian are between his ears. Believing a lie empowers the liar. ~ Bill Johnson

Lebedeva snapped her fingers. "It's like lying!" she exclaimed. "Well, we understand that, of course! The bigger the lie, the happier the liar. ~ Catherynne M Valente

The fruits of our actions are always interconnected with the roots of honesty towards our inner self. The liar is an enemy to himself ~ Robin Sacredfire

Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler - for the liar - than it really is, or ought to be.
In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives. ~ Adrienne Rich

Against fantasists. - The fantasist denies reality to himself, the liar does so only to others. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

Lies were lethal, however honourable the intentions of the liar. They deprived people of the opportunity to know the basic facts of their own lives. ~ Sophie Hannah

What is it in people, or just in people like me, that would rather let a lie go by, would rather wish it away or minimize it, than point it out and cause the liar embarassment? ~ Walter Kirn

- I though you wanted war?
- There was a time I'd have greeted the end of the world with open arms - the Herald sound desolate - Now I just want to go home. ~ Den Patrick

Only the liar knows that he's lying. ~ Jodi Picoult

One lies to seek a bit of relief from a ponderous, suffocating reality, but the liar, like the drinker, gradually comes to need larger and larger doses. The lies become blacker and more complex, and they mesh and rub together until in the end they shine with the luster of truth. ~ Osamu Dazai

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. ~ Harry G. Frankfurt

There can't be that many individual souls. Not souls like mine. There isn't room. There can't be. ~ Stephen Fry

People can be reassured by a tone of voice. By a touch. A gesture. Even if the voice and gestures are false, the innocent person meets the liar halfway to complete the lie. It's a partnership. ~ Jody Shields

Lying caused a physiological reaction that cut the flow of blood to the capillaries located at the end of the nose. It caused a tingling feeling that usually made the liar rub at the spot. ~ David Baldacci

One of the laudable by-products of the Freudian quackery is the discovery that lying, in most cases, is involuntary and inevitable
that the liar can no more avoid it than he can avoid blinking his eyes when a light flashes or jumping when a bomb goes off behind him. ~ H.L. Mencken

I am glad that I can tell the truth, for lies are a form of theft; the liar steals from another person's trust. There are liars all over the world who have grown rich on the trust they have stolen. ~ Najaf Mazari

Was my sin basically one of untruthfulness? Or, more likely, one of cowardice? But the liar knows the truth. The coward knows his fear and runs away. ~ Josephine Hart

I think that you are the liar!" I say, my voice quaking. "You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I'm more perceptive than the avarge person. And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it all falls apart." I am crying now, nut I am not ashamed of the tears shining on my cheeks or the thickness of my voice. "So you must have lied when you told me all those things ... you must have, because I can't believe your love really is that feeble."
I step closer to him, so that there are only inches between us, and none of the others can hear me.
"I am still the person who would have died rather than kill you," I say, remembering the attack simulation and the feel of his heartbeat under my hand. "I am exactly who you think I am. ~ Veronica Roth

It's only human,' you cry in defense of any depravity, reaching the stage of self-abasement where you seek to make the concept 'human' mean the weakling, the fool, the rotter, the liar, the failure, the coward, the fraud, and to exile from the human race the hero, the thinker, the producer, the inventor, the strong, the purposeful, the pure - as if 'to feel' were human, but to think were not, as if to fail were human, but to succeed were not, as if corruption were human, but virtue were not - as if the premise of death were proper to man, but the premise of life were not. ~ Ayn Rand

Moderate' Muslims, and apologists and propagandists for Islam, will attempt to deny or obscure the real meaning, nature, and intent of jihad. Some will say that jihad means only a Muslim's 'inner struggle' to be a better person, and that jihad has no military meaning whatever. Others will acknowledge that Muslims have a religious duty to spread Islam throughout the world, but insist that it is to be spread only peacefully, through dawah - literally 'the call' - meaning persuasion and reasoning. Finally, some will go so far as to admit that it can also mean warfare, but insist that in Islam, warfare is allowed only in self-defense or against oppression. However, all of these assertions are examples of a tactic that Islam encourages in waging jihad: taqiyya or Kithman - 'lying,' 'deception,' 'deceit.' Muslims are encouraged to lie if, in the opinion of the liar, telling the lie will be 'good' for Islam. This is a documented fact according to both ancient and modern scholars of Islam. ~ Brigitte Gabriel

Even a small, everyday lie is a clue to the personality and preoccupations of the liar, like a dream or any other confection of the mind, that is half-conscious and half-unconscious, as all creative acts must be. ~ Helen McCloy

The liar has a bad memory. ~ Idries Shah

It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave
and the liar said it really happened
was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.'
Is he kidding? I thought.
Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough.
Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body. ~ Amy Hempel

Just as the liar 's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed , but that he cannot believe any one else; so a guilty society can more easily be persuaded that any apparently innocent act is guilty than that any apparently guilty act is innocent. ~ George Bernard Shaw

If you wouldn't invite a thief in your house why would you allow a liar in. the only difference between the two is the thief steals your money and objects the liar steals with words by deceit of manipulation by Bonnie Zackson Koury ~ Bonnie Zackson Koury

All boxers are liars. Con men. The better the liar, the better the fighter. That's because if you knew what was in a fighter's heart, if you knew what he was really thinking, he'd be easier to find. And if you could find him, he'd be easier to hit. And if you could hit him, you might expose him. And that might expose every person they never stood up to and every person they never stood up for. A single blow can unveil the watermark of your soul in a way nothing else ever can. ~ Brin-Jonathan Butler

The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed. ~ Baltasar Gracian

Conquer the angry one by not getting angry; conquer the wicked by goodness; conquer the stingy by generosity, and the liar by speaking the truth.
[Verse 223] ~ Gautama Buddha

Be mild with the mild, shrewd with the crafty, confiding to the honest, rough to the ruffian, and a thunderbolt to the liar. But in all this, never be unmindful of your own dignity. ~ John Brown

The liar has many friends, and leads an existence of great loneliness. ~ Adrienne Rich

Whom does undeserved honour please, and undeserved blame alarm, but the base and the liar? ~ Horace

Unethical conduct is actually the conduct of destruction and fear; lies are told because one is afraid of the consequences should one tell the truth; thus, the liar is inevitably a coward, the coward is inevitably a liar. ~ L. Ron Hubbard

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. ~ Sam Harris

The liar wants to be believed, but lying undermines the foundation for credibility. ~ Randal Marlin

Faking depends on a measure of complicity between the perpetrator and the victim, who together conspire to believe what they don't believe and to feel what they are incapable of feeling. There are fake beliefs, fake opinions, fake kinds of expertise. There is also fake emotion, which comes about when people debase the forms and the language in which true feeling can take root, so that they are no longer fully aware of the difference between the true and the false. Kitsch is one very important example of this. The kitsch work of art is not a response to the real world, but a fabrication designed to replace it. Yet both producer and consumer conspire to persuade each other that what they feel in and through the kitsch work of art is something deep, important and real.

Anyone can lie. One need only have the requisite intention - in other words, to say something with the intention to deceive. Faking, by contrast, is an achievement. To fake things you have to take people in, yourself included. In an important sense, therefore, faking is not something that can be intended, even though it comes about through intentional actions. The liar can pretend to be shocked when his lies are exposed, but his pretence is merely a continuation of his lying strategy. The fake really is shocked when he is exposed, since he had created around himself a community of trust, of which he himself was a member. Understanding this phenomenon is, it seems to me, integral to understanding how a ~ Roger Scruton

The image pleases me enough : to slip from the body's tight container and into some luminous womb, gliding there without effort till the distant shapes glow brighter and more familiar, till all your beloveds hover before you, their lit arms held out in welcome. ~ Mary Karr

Along with the punctuality gene, the liar gene had skipped out on me as well. I was officially the world's worst liar. I could've won and award for it. Whenever I tried to mimic a serious expression, I ended up looking like I was half-retarded ~ Rachel K. Burke

Violence never really deals with the basic evil of the situation. Violence may murder the murderer, but it doesn't murder murder. Violence may murder the liar, but it doesn't murder lie; it doesn't establish truth. Violence may even murder the dishonest man, but it doesn't murder dishonesty. Violence may go to the point of murdering the hater, but it doesn't murder hate. It may increase hate. It is always a descending spiral leading nowhere. This is the ultimate weakness of violence: It multiplies evil and violence in the universe. It doesn't solve any problems. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is nothing special about lies. Green monkeys and chimpanzees can lie. A green monkey, for example, has been observed calling 'Careful! A lion!' when there was no lion around. This alarm conveniently frightened away a fellow monkey who had just found a banana, leaving the liar all alone to steal the prize for itself. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

If, in the course of a thousand or two thousand years, science arrives at the necessity of renewing its points of view, that will not mean that science is a liar. Science cannot lie, for it's always striving, according to the momentary state of knowledge, to deduce what is true. When it makes a mistake, it does so in good faith. It's Christianity that's the liar. It's in perpetual conflict with itself. ~ Adolf Hitler

It is a longstanding South-
ern tradition to call someone a "storyteller" as a polite
way of calling him a liar. ~ William R. Cobb

And I, love, am a pathological liar. ~ Sylvia Plath

I don't want anything from you."
"Liar," he accused, and lowered his mouth to mine. ~ Chloe Neill

Jesus Christ was either a liar, a lunatic, or He was who He said He was ~ C.S. Lewis

I must be true to myself within my music or I would be a liar. ~ Nneka

All fathers are liars ... If you want to be a father, you have to be prepared to become a liar. ~ Alison Espach

I'm a liar I always used to say I'm happy. ~ Mansur Alam Almia

Never under estimate a pretty little liar. ~ Sara Shepard

I never took you for a coward, Stevie,' he said quietly and her gaze swung back, angrily. 'Did
I make you mad? Good. I'm glad. Because you make me mad. If today didn't change anything
for you, then you're either a liar or a fool. And I never took you for either of those, either.' He
leaned closer, until he could see every dark eyelash. 'I'm not a coward or liar, but I might be a
fool because I'm not giving up on you. Nor am I giving you up. So consider yourself on notice,
Detective Mazzetti. Things will be different when you get out of here. I'm not going to wait
forever, because we don't have forever. If things had been any different this morning, we might
not even have this moment. So if you're not "ready", then you'd best spend your time in here
figuring out how to get "ready ~ Karen Rose

I do show violence as entertainment. Clearly, I'd be a liar if I said I didn't. ~ Nick Love

Liar: A lawyer with a roving commission. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Most children - I know I did when I was a kid - fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don't tell their real parents about that - you don't want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar. ~ Maurice Sendak

When your lover is a liar, you and he have a lot in common, you're both lying to you! ~ Susan Forward

Thank you, horseradish, for being neither a radish nor a horse. What you are is a liar food. ~ Jimmy Fallon

Who you are in public is a test of your conviction; who you are in private, integrity. ~ Criss Jami

Conquer a liar with truth. ~ Gautama Buddha

I knew when I grew up, I always wanted to be a liar, and if you're in television, you're lying because you're just pretending to be yourself much like I'm doing now. ~ John Ritter

Pretty thing, and such a bad liar. A dog can smell a lie, you know. Look around you, and take a good whiff. They're all liars here ... and every one better than you. ~ George R R Martin

A liar is full of oaths. ~ Pierre Corneille

It was new to play a woman who plays with her sincerity, and who is a seductress, a manipulator and a liar! I was able to compose a character as opposed to being very natural, so it was very interesting for me. It was great to realise that I could be this kind of real woman! ~ Audrey Tautou

As a child I was an inveterate liar. As opposed to now, I am a Novelist. ~ John Green

Ashleigh's a manipulative liar," Jenny said. "She makes Dick Cheney look like Mr. Rogers."
"That is an ugly thing to say about Dick Cheney!" Dr. Goodling snapped. "And my daughter, as well. ~ J.L. Bryan

I am such a bad liar. I would like to lie, though. ~ Natalie Imbruglia

I don't like anything that scares me, and I prefer to face it head on and get over it. Anyone who says they're not scared is a fool, a liar or both. I just don't want that fear in my stomach to be part of my life, so I work to eliminate it. ~ Anderson Cooper

I wasn't really going to go. I ain't so heartless I'm gonna let someone be struck down with pain on account of me. Even if that someone is a murderer and a liar. Hell, murderers and liars used to sing me to sleep. ~ Cassandra Rose Clarke

If someone believes in god, is he a liar? He never saw god or any proof or evidence of god. He only heard about god. ~ Debasish Mridha

People, in general, tend to project onto others their own state of mind. Well-meaning people inevitably assume other people are well meaning. People who cheat assume everyone cheats. People who deceive assume everybody deceives.
Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 ~ Anna C. Salter

Show me a liar, and I'll show you a thief. ~ George Herbert

A liar lies to others. A fool lies to herself. ~ Sable Grace

You're a no good heartbreaker, you're a liar, and you're a cheat. I don't know why I let you do these things to me. ~ Aretha Franklin

Success has always been a great liar ~ Friedrich Nietzsche