122 Lie Quotes

In every walk of life, truth and deception often dance together, weaving stories that shape our experiences and perceptions. Lies—whether tiny white fibs or grandiose fabrications—can illuminate hidden truths or lead us astray. Understanding the intricacies of dishonesty and its impact on human interaction can be both enlightening and sobering. Delving into the wisdom of thinkers, writers, and observers, we have curated a collection of the top 122 quotes about lies. Each one offers a unique perspective on the nature of deceit, its consequences, and the enduring search for honesty in a world where untruths are all too common. Let these quotes inspire reflection and perhaps, a deeper appreciation for the truth.

1. “The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.” - George Bernard Shaw

2. “Nothing is easier than self-deceit.For what every man wishes,that he also believes to be true.” - Demosthenes

3. “A lie cannot live.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

4. “Mr Lorry asks the witness questions:Ever been kicked? Might have been.Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.” - Charles Dickens

5. “To the union of all honest men.” - Aaron Burr

6. “It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say.” - Laurie Halse Anderson

7. “To say that the first casualty of war is truth is to miss the rather more important point that a principal weapon of war is lies.” - Harry M. Collins

8. “Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or a vampire," Jace said. "They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you—with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place." He sighed. "They're not really about helping people. More about harm disguised as help.” - Cassandra Clare

9. “It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe.” - Thomas Paine

10. “An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.” - Aldous Huxley

11. “There's a difference between playing and playing games. The former is an act of joy, the latter — an act.” - Vera Nazarian

12. “If any era should be aware of the temptations to rewrite history, it is our own.” - Marjorie Garber

13. “So let's just forget about the whole thing and agree never to speak of it again. And I promise I'll never lie to you again.Ah, but surely you must be saying, "Hey! Isn't this entire story a work of fiction and therefore one big lie?"Perhaps. But we already agreed never to speak of it again.” - Jason Carter Eaton

14. “But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator's credo that one doesn't so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.” - Lionel Shriver

15. “My beauty doesn’t lie between my thighs.” - Tracy Ames

16. “Ellie: "You could lie to me. You could tell me to be encouraged, that good will triumph over evil."Richard: "Good will triumph over evil."Ellie: "Liar.” - Joan Bauer

17. “With all due respect, if you’re forty-three, then I’m a fetus.” - David Levithan

18. “I’m going, and don’t you dare try to stop me.”I ran through the door, willing myself to make it downstairs before I started to cry.” - Claudia Gray

19. “Clever as the Devil and twice as pretty.” - Holly Black

20. “If I said I was madly in love with you you'd know I was lying.” - Margaret Mitchell

21. “But Katie knew it was a sin, had known from the moment she made the decision to lie with Adam. However, the transgression wasn't making love without the sanction of marriage. It was that for the first time in her life, Katie had put herself first. Put her own wants and needs above everything and everyone else.” - Jodi Picoult

22. “I'd rather hear an ugly truth, rather than an obscure lie.” - Ana Monnar

23. “Many lies lie between one truth.” - Toba Beta

24. “Cruel', O'Kelly laughed, 'it's cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God's mercy, then it's his gift of making us unable to lie.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

25. “I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar - if he is financially fortunate.” - John Steinbeck

26. “There is a lie that acts like a virus within the mind of humanity. And that lie is, ‘There’s not enough good to go around. There’s lack and there’s limitation and there’s just not enough.’The truth is that there’s more than enough good to go around. There is more than enough creative ideas. There is more than enough power. There is more than enough love. There’s more than enough joy. All of this begins to come through a mind that is aware of its own infinite nature.There is enough for everyone. If you believe it, if you can see it, if you act from it, it will show up for you. That's the truth.” - Michael Beckwith

27. “Old liarshold lies.” - Toba Beta

28. “I'm telling you a lie in a vicious effort that you will repeat my lie over and over until it becomes true” - Lady Gaga

29. “Bullshit takes no genius,even fool senses its' foul.” - Toba Beta

30. “But an Adrian also knew that an Adrian's lies were real: they were lived and felt and acted out as thoroughly as another man's truths - if other men had truths - and he believed it possible that this last lie might see him through to the grave.” - Stephen Fry

31. “It's not a lie if you don't tell the truth.But it's fucked up if you falsify the fact.” - Toba Beta

32. “Trivers, pursuing his theory of the emotions to its logical conclusion, notes that in a world of walking lie detectors the best strategy is to believe your own lies. You can’t leak your hidden intentions if you don’t think they are your intentions. According to his theory of self-deception, the conscious mind sometimes hides the truth from itself the better to hide it from others. But the truth is useful, so it should be registered somewhere in the mind, walled off from the parts that interact with other people.” - Steven Pinker

33. “If a man confessed anything on his death bed, it was the truth; for no man could stare death in the face and lie.” - richard wright

34. “...maybe it's only fitting that relationship that started with a lie would end with one.” - Ally Carter

35. “If you say that you never lie in life,you honestly insult my intelligence.” - Toba Beta

36. “A friend once said, and I found to be true,That everyday people, they lie to God too,So what makes you think, that they won't lie to you.” - Lauryn Hill

37. “True love will triumph in the end—which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, it's the most beautiful lie we have.” - John Green

38. “That's the crazy thing about lies. You start to fall for them, yourself.” - Jodi Picoult

39. “One ought always to lie, when one can do good by it;” - Mark Twain

40. “Reality CheckHis lying is not contigent on who you are or what you do. His lying is not your fault. Lying is his choice and his problem, and if he makes that choice with you, he will make it with any other woman he’s with. That doesn’t mean you’re an angel and he’s the devil. It does mean that if he doesn’t like certain things about you, he has many ways to address them besides lying. If there are sexual problems between you, there are many resources available to help you. Nothing can change until you hold him responsible and accountable for lying and stop blaming yourself. The lies we tell ourselves to keep from seeing the truth about our lovers don’t feel like lies. They feel comfortable, familiar, and true. We repeat them like a mantra and cling to them like security blankets, hoping to calm ourselves and regain our sense that the world works the way we believe it ought to. Self-lies are false friends we look to for comfort and protection—and for a short time they may make us feel better. But we can only keep the truth at bay for so long. Our self-lies can’t erase his lies, and as we’ll see, the longer we try to pretend they can, the more we deepen the hurt.” - Susan Forward

41. “They like to tell us that it is important to speak the truth, but it has been my experience that real happiness lies in having people tell you what you want to believe, usually not the same thing at all, and if you have to stub your toe on the truth later, so be it.” - Jeff Lindsay

42. “A lie is an affront to the soul, as well as an insult to the intelligence of the person to whom one lies.” - Judith McNaught

43. “I survive at the edge of friends circles.” - Holly Black

44. “I know a lie when I hear one.” - Adrian Mitchel

45. “Je öfter sich ein Politiker widerspricht, desto größer ist er.” - Friedrich Dürrenmatt

46. “Perception is the lie that we convince ourselves exists” - Melissa Bradley

47. “Everything they've said is tainted now. Every day was a lie.” - Lindsey Leavitt

48. “Human has the ability to believe in something wrong as if it is true.” - Toba Beta

49. “Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.” - Criss Jami

50. “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.” - Philip Pullman

51. “If you've treated your girlfriend without respect, taken advantage of her, or cheated on her, your actions have taught her that she has no value. Needless to say, this is a serious, serious injury. If you don't try to make it right, she might start to believe the lie you've told her and spend the rest of her life thinking she deserves poor treatment.” - Josh Shipp

52. “Smell shit when one's bragging.” - Toba Beta

53. “And remember that within every lie, there is a truth hidden. Know the truth to defeat the lie.” - T. A. Miles

54. “Lying's wrong, but when the world spins backwards, a small wrong may be a big right.” - David Mitchell

55. “Language always betrays us, tells the truth when we want to lie, and dissolves into formlessness when we would most like to be precise.” - Jeanette Winterson

56. “The lie, of course, is more interesting.” - John Irving

57. “I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.” - Anne Rice

58. “It came as naturally to him as breathing or lying, or worse. His mama had only taught her son to be cautious at all times. Garnette was more than that. Much, much more than that.” - V.S. Carnes

59. “Socrates said the perfect society would be based on a great lie. People would be told that lie from the cradle, and they would believe it, because human beings need to make order out of chaos.” - Anne Frasier

60. “When people tell a lie about something, they have to make up a bunch of lies to go with the first one. ‘Mythomania’ is the word for it.” - Haruki Murakami

61. “Whoever tells a lie is not pure of heart, and such a person can not cook a clean soup.” - Ludwig van Beethoven

62. “The lie took form as she spoke, pulling on as many strands of truth as it could reach.” - Scott Westerfeld

63. “A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.” - Jodi Picoult

64. “There is a lie in between a promise and many excuses.” - Toba Beta

65. “For people who say they hate being lied to, just start telling them nothing but the pure truth--about everything. That will teach them” - Seth Adam Brown

66. “We wait and think and doubt and hate. How does it make you feel? The overwhelming feeling is rage. We hate ourself for being unable to be other than what we are. Unable to be better. We feel rage. The feelings must be followed. It doesn't matter whether you're an ideologue or a sensualist, you follow the stimuli thinking that they're your signposts to the promised land. But they are nothing of the kind. What they are is rocks to navigate the past, each on your brush against, ripping you a little more open and they are always more on the horizon. But you can't face up to the that, so you force yourself to believe the bullshit of those you instinctively know are liars and you repeat those lies to yourself and to others, hoping that by repeating them often and fervently enough you'll attain the godlike status we accord those who tell the lies most frequently and most passionately. But you never do, and even if you could, you wouldn't value it, you'd realise that nobody believes in heroes any more. We know that they only want to sell us something we don't really want and keep from us what we really do need. Maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we're getting in touch with our condition at last. It's horrible how we always die alone, but no worse than living alone.” - Irvine Welsh

67. “There's that horrible-beautiful moment, that bitter-sweet impasse where you know that somebody is bullshitting you but they're doing it with such panache and conviction...no, it's because they say exactly what you want to hear, at that point in time.” - Irvine Welsh

68. “If we are teaching children how to lie,to steal, and to be aggressive, why do schools punish those who lie and steal? and why does the society punish the offender criminal?” - Ali Altantawi

69. “Hate will only eat the truth, then spit out a lie.” - Anthony Liccione

70. “Rumours are like sexually transmitted diseases, both are spread by whores.” - Habeeb Akande

71. “Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.” - Neal Shusterman

72. “We both knew that what I said was the truth, as well as being a lie. The pure and honest answer was pinging between us, hovering above the weeds.” - Sonya Hartnett

73. “মিথ্যা হলো শয়তানের বিয়ের মন্ত্র। মিথ্যা বললেই শয়তানের বিয়ে হয়। বিয়ে হওয়া মানেই সন্তান-সন্ততি হওয়া। একটা মিথ্যার পর আরো অনেকগুলি মিথ্যা বলতে হয় এই কারণেই।পরের মিথ্যাগুলি শয়তানের সন্তান।” - Humayun Ahmed

74. “So now they're shaking in their boots and looking for someone to give them the answer they want to hear. Not the truth, but some lie that will protect them from the truth” - Ralph Ellision

75. “The fact that he does not tell me the truth all the time makes me not sure of his truth at certain times, and then I work to figure out for myself if what he is telling me is the truth or not, and sometimes I can figure out that it's not the truth and sometimes I don't know and never know, and sometimes just because he says it to me over and over again I am convinced it is the truth because I don't believe he would repeat a lie so often. Maybe the truth does not matter, but I want to know it if only so that I can come to some conclusions about such questions as: whether he is angry at me or not; if he is, then how angry; whether he still loves her or not; if he does, then how much; whether he loves me or not; how much; how capable he is of deceiving me in the act and after the act in the telling.” - Lydia Davis

76. “They told us love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end.For the very first time I realize, that this, too, might also be a lie.” - Lauren Oliver

77. “Every gay person must come out. As difficult as it is, you must tell your immediate family. You must tell your relatives. You must tell your friends if indeed they are your friends. You must tell the people you work with. You must tell the people in the stores you shop in. Once they realize that we are indeed their children, that we are indeed everywhere, every myth, every lie, every innuendo will be destroyed once and all. And once you do, you will feel so much better” - Harvey Milk

78. “The walls were coming down around me, but still, I couldn't imagine telling the truth. Not now. It was too late. How can I tell Mom and Dad what we'd done? It would ruin everything. It would ruin their image of me; it would ruin every thought they'd ever had about who I was. It would be another death.Another loss. Another miscarriage.” - Dana Reinhardt

79. “Men lie the most,women tell the biggest lies.” - Chris Rock

80. “Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.” - George R.R. Martin

81. “My eyes in tearsHeart never sighsMy mind never fearsI conquer the lies” - Munia Khan

82. “The mirror will only lie, when you look at it through a mask.” - Anthony Liccione

83. “She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again.” - Cheryl Strayed

84. “You lie like butter wouldn't melt in your mouth, Edward."He smiled. "I don't lie to you.""Really," I said.The smile became a grin. "Okay, not most of the time, anymore." His face sobered. "I'm not lying now.” - Laurell K. Hamilton

85. “Everything he had ever done that had been better left undone. Every lie he had told — told to himself, or told to others. Every little hurt, and all the great hurts. Each one was pulled out of him, detail by detail, inch by inch. The demon stripped away the cover of forgetfulness, stripped everything down to truth, and it hurt more than anything.” - Neil Gaiman

86. “Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long.” - Stephen Kelman

87. “Chi è bravo a mentire tiene la testa alta. Non ha timore. Chi non sa mentire dstoglie gli occhi.” - Guenassia Jean-Michel

88. “Sometimes people don’t want the truth. Sometimes the truth is worse than a lie.” - Chelsea Cameron

89. “they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

90. “A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.” - Dejan Stojanovic

91. “In the lie of truth lies the truth.” - Dejan Stojanovic

92. “They lie, you know. It's not easier to ask for forgiveness. Not even a little.” - Michelle Hodkin

93. “[the only acting advice he would give] What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?” - Laurence Olivier

94. “I'm far from perfect- maybe beautifully flawed- but I don't lie” - Jayde Scott

95. “From the Absolute to the Relative-from the Infinite to the Finite-from the Undifferentiated to the Differentiated-from the Unconditioned to the Conditioned and again from the Relative to the Absolute. That is the whole truth of the inexistance to the existentialist, formless to the form, Creator to the Creature, one to the every being, absolute to the inabsolute and vis-á-vis, soforth every single thing is temporary, non-existed, so do I, the dream that I dreamed off is simply a 'lie and impermanent too' same as in the mortal world whatever I do experience.” - Upanishad

96. “Of course I do, Jack! You have to beLIEve me!” - Raymond Benson

97. “Nothing good will come out with lying.” - Son Jae Ho

98. “If I told you, you might be forced to lie about it. Not that you aren't really good at it, but why put an old man in that position?” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

99. “In case you’re not bright enough to figure it out, there’s a real upside to having a sinner like me answer your phone. I lie, and your conscience stays clear.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

100. “Talking is not easy. Talking intends to convey what you mean. Lying is easy, not talking. When one lies, one doesnot care, and that’s the easy part.” - Ravindra Shukla

101. “I had fallen in love with a perfect lie.” - R.K. Lilley

102. “Take caution of what lies, in what you may beLIEve.” - Anthony Liccione

103. “The funny thing about a lie is that once it has been said and believed, it lives and becomes. It can't be taken back. It sucks all the air from you until you give up and it takes over and you forget how to breathe on your own. It is like those parasitic relationships, but not like the shark and the little remora that politely cleans the shark's skin and sometimes attaches itself to its underbelly. No, it is more like a tapeworm eating someone from the inside out.” - Carrie Arcos

104. “I suppose we all lie to ourselves sometimes.” - Cassandra Clare

105. “It is better to tell the truth and face the punishment, than to lie and face the consequences.” - Anthony Liccione

106. “The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimming when once the actions have become a lie.” - George Eliot

107. “The truth hurts when you live a life of lies.” - Habeeb Akande

108. “Fill your mind before you empty your mouth.” - Habeeb Akande

109. “The truth hurts but a lie will eventually as well” - Richard L Torres

110. “People only tell lies when the truth is disagreeable to them, or frightens them, or to cover sin.” - Anne Perry

111. “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

112. “To find out if she really loved me, I hooked her up to a lie detector. And just as I suspected, my machine was broken.
” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

113. “There is no effort in time wasted by remembering the truth. A lie requires an effort of life and wasted time to remember because one lie tends to become a lifestyle that destroys.” - Richard Diaz

114. “the difference between secret andlie is similar to the difference of iceand water.when you heat ice it becomes water.and when you force anyone toreveal there secrets it comes in aform of lie.” - munendra dwivedi

115. “A lie, when believed, became the truth.” - Michelle M. Pillow

116. “Lying is an art, if you can convince yourself with lie, then you are a master.” - nikhil yadav

117. “I cried for a while, taking solace in the comforting lie of his embrace. The illusion, the fantasy, it helped. I never wanted to leave. I wanted to stay here forever, held tight to his chest, his fingers stroking my hair, his heart beating against my ear: you’re-safe, trust-me, love-you. Love. Did I want him to love me? Yes. I wanted someone to love me. And what was love if not someone risking their lives to save you? Caleb had saved me. Did it mean he loved me? A part of me wanted to think so. To believe in a romantic ideal that didn’t exist. I wanted to believe the lie. But more than that – I wanted it not to be a lie” - CJ Roberts

118. “It was just a lie that seemed real.It was a promise that was never meant to be true.The forever that had a deadline.It felt like falling in love, but it was falling in aheartbreak café!” - Moffat Machingura

119. “A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.” - Criss Jami

120. “Almost everything a person thinks is a lie, and an assault against the natural soul.” - Bryant McGill

121. “Some promises are lies we never meant to tell.” - Robin Maxwell

122. “By telling lie you can hide the truth, but u can't reject it.” - munendra dwivedi