129 Quotes About Lying

In a world where truth and deception often intertwine, the power of words reveals much about human nature. Whether it's a white lie told to spare someone's feelings or a grandiose fabrication meant to deceive, lying is an intricate part of our social fabric. This collection of 129 carefully selected quotes delves into the multifaceted nature of lying, offering insights from thinkers, writers, and philosophers across eras. As you embark on this exploration, prepare to reflect on the moral complexities and the profound implications of dishonesty in our everyday lives.

1. “The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort” - Katherine Dunn

2. “It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.” - George Washington

3. “There are three types of lies -- lies, damn lies, and statistics.” - Benjamin Disraeli

4. “People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.” - Ayn Rand

5. “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

6. “I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.” - Al Pacino

7. “To pretend, I actually do the thing: I have therefore only pretended to pretend.” - Jacques Derrida

8. “The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others' advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling.” - Mark Twain

9. “I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me.” - S.E. Hinton

10. “I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.” - J.D. Salinger

11. “The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

12. “Lying is a thriving vocation.” - Susanna Centlivre

13. “In thy foul throat thou liest.” - William Shakespeare

14. “His lies were so exquisite I almost wept.” - Dave Eggers

15. “Anybody who says they are a good liar obviously is not, because any legitimately savvy liar would always insist they're honest about everything.” - Chuck Klosterman

16. “Half the lies they tell about me aren't true.” - Yogi Berra

17. “So the American government lied to the Native Americans for many, many years, and then President Clinton lied about a relationship, and everyone was surprised! A little naïve, I feel!” - Eddie Izzard

18. “Wer sich selbst belügt und seine eigenen Lügen anhört, kommt schließlich soweit, dass er keine Wahrheit mehr, weder in sich noch außer sich, zu erkennen vermag [...]” - Fjodor Dostojewski

19. “Es gibt immer einen Punkt dabei, wo man nicht mehr weiß, ob man lügt oder ob das, was man erfunden hat, wahrer ist als man selber.” - Robert Musil

20. “On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art.” - Isabel Fonseca

21. “We need falsifications to make the past inhabitable.” - Frans Kellendonk

22. “At times to be silent is to lie. You will win because you have enough brute force. But you will not convince. For to convince you need to persuade. And in order to persuade you would need what you lack: Reason and Right” - Miguel de Unamuno

23. “How is it possible that our parents lied to us?""Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that...""Everythings going to be alright.” - Brian K. Vaughan

24. “Cathy's lies were never innocent. Their purpose was to escape punishment, or work, or responsibility, and they were used for profit. Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also -- either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. If one is accused of a lie and it turns out to be the truth, there is a backlog that will last a long time and protect a number of untruths.” - John Steinbeck

25. “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.” - Alfred Tennyson

26. “You think it’s because they’re lying? Nonsense! I like it when people lie! Lying is man’s only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie--you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that’s honorable in its way; well, but we can’t even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I’ll kiss you for it. Lying in one’s own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else’s way; in the first case you’re a man, and in the second—no better than a bird! The truth won’t go away, but life can be nailed shut; there are examples. Well, so where are we all now? With regard to science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aspirations, liberalism, reason, experience, and everything, everything, everything, we’re all, without exception, still sitting in the first grade! We like getting by on other people’s reason--we’ve acquired a taste for it! Right? Am I right?” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

27. “The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they're lying, they know we know they're lying, but they keep lying to us, and we keep pretending to believe them.” - Elena Gorokhova

28. “Things come apart so easily when they have been held together with lies.” - Dorothy Allison

29. “Those who are capable of tyranny are capable of perjury to sustain it.” - Lysander Spooner

30. “Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

31. “If you don't want to slip up tomorrow, speak the truth today.” - Bruce Lee

32. “Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, lessens the friction of social contacts. It is only in lies, wholeheartedly and bravely told, that human nature attains through words and speech the forbearance, the nobility, the romance, the idealism, that -- being what it is -- it falls so short of in fact and in deed.” - Clare Boothe Luce

33. “The truly scary thing about undiscovered lies is that they have a greater capacity to diminish us than exposed ones.” - Cheryl Hughes

34. “When people cheat in any arena, they diminish themselves-they threaten their own self-esteem and their relationships with others by undermining the trust they have in their ability to succeed and in their ability to be true.” - Cheryl Hughes

35. “Integrity is a bugger, it really is. Lying can get you into difficulties, but to really wind up in the crappers try telling nothing but the truth.” - David Mitchell

36. “Yeah, it never fails to amaze me how a single lie can undo an entire lifetime of good. (Aiden)” - Sherrilyn Kenyon

37. “I said with perfect honesty, "I have no intention of trying to take these suckers out by myself, no.” - Robin McKinley

38. “The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.” - Sarah Dessen

39. “When witnesses concoct lies, they often miss the obvious.” - John Grisham

40. “The secret is to know how to lie" he used to say, " and to know when someone's lying to you". His father, Steve eventually decided, must have known how to lie.” - Nicholas Sparks

41. “...even a tiny bit of deceit is dishonorable when it's used for selfish or cowardly reasons.- Mr. Penderwick” - Jeanne Birdsall

42. “He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.” - Thomas Jefferson

43. “Declare your jihad on thirteen enemies you cannot see -egoism, arrogance, conceit, selfishness, greed, lust, intolerance, anger, lying, cheating, gossiping and slandering. If you can master and destroy them, then you will be read to fight the enemy you can see.” - Al-Ghazzali

44. “Die meisten Lügen sind wahr und spinnen sich von ganz allein, kaum jemand kannte diese Wahrheit besser als Colin Darcy. Wenn man erst einmal der Melodie der Worte zu lauschen beginnt, dann pfeift man sie bald selbst. Und wenn Lügen wie kunstvolle Lieder sind, dann gehörte Helen Darcy, Colins Mutter, zu jenem seltenen Menschenschlag, der allzeit eine beschwingte Melodie auf den Lippen trägt.” - Christoph Marzi

45. “Cheating and lying aren't struggles, they're reasons to break up.” - Patti Callahan Henry

46. “As soon as we got back I ran upstairs and told everyone the story, thus telling everyone the alarm code, thus breaking one of the Ten Commandments when I lied and said I’d keep the code a secret. As I’ve known for a long, long time now, hell is going to be totally fucking worth it.” - Sarah Royal

47. “Romantic literature is in effect imaginative lying.” - Oscar Wilde

48. “But you can't make people listen. They have to come round in their own time, wondering what happened and why the world blew up around them. It can't last.” - Ray Bradbury

49. “It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.” - Kim Edwards

50. “I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think? Well, tell me!'His brother was silent and Edward went on: 'If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what you really thought, you would enter into a serious conversation with a madman and you yourself would become mad. And it is the same way with the world that surrounds us. If I obstinately told a man the truth to his face, it would mean I was taking him seriously. And to take something so unimportant seriously means to become less than serious oneself. I, you see, must lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become one of them myself.” - Milan Kundera

51. “And this wasn’t lying, not really. It was leaving out.” - Stephen King

52. “I believe in my mask-- The man I made up is meI believe in my dance-- And my destiny” - Sam Shepard

53. “The best lies about me are the ones I told.” - Patrick Rothfuss

54. “He lies to himself. If Eugenides talked in his sleep, he'd lie then, too.” - Megan Whalen Turner

55. “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” - Abraham Lincoln

56. “Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.” - Oscar Wilde

57. “Over time, any deception destroys intimacy, and without intimacy couples cannot have true and lasting love.” - Bonnie Eaker Weil

58. “Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.” - Yevgeny Zamyatin

59. “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

60. “Actually," said Jace, "I prefer to think that I'm a liar in a way that's uniquely my own.” - Cassandra Clare

61. “Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still.” - Roman Payne

62. “Right, except I'm not going to lie to my mom, because what kind of bastard lies to his own mother?” - John Green

63. “Mom actually said that?" Cassie's face shown with happiness. "She always hated my math!""Nah," Martin said. "She was just being that way for you. She thought it was what you needed to hear. If parents told us what they really think about stuff, we could figure them out like regular people.” - Clare B. Dunkle

64. “She had argued for a broad interpretation, which imposed a duty to answer questions truthfully, and not to hide facts which could give a different complexion to a matter, but on subsequent thought she had revised her position.Although she still believed that one should be frank in answers to questions, this duty arose only where there was an obligation, based on a reasonable expectation, to make a full disclosure. There was no duty to reveal everything in response to a casual question by one who had no right to the information.” - Alexander McCall Smith

65. “Marianne was silent; it was impossible for her to say what she did not feel, however trivial the occasion…” - Jane Austen

66. “We assume that all statements must be mild inversions of the truth, because it's too weird to imagine people who aren't casually lying, pretty much all the time.” - Chuck Klosterman

67. “One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.” - Al David

68. “The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.” - Robert A. Heinlein

69. “And once when we were walking on Bredon Hill, we met a bedraggled and exhausted fox. 'Oh, poor thing,' Jack said. 'What shall we do when the hunt comes up? I can already hear them. Oh, I know -- I have an idea.' He cupped his hands and shouted to the first riders, "Hallo, yoicks, gone that way," and pointed in the direction opposite to the one the fox had taken. The whole hunt followed his directions. There followed a long discussion about when lying was morally justifiable, but he boasted delightedly later to my wife that he had saved the life of a poor fox and showed no trace of guilt.” - George Sayer

70. “No one believes a liar. Even when she's telling the truth.” - Sara Shepard

71. “Before you enbark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” - Sara Shepard

72. “Mike drank straight from the carton, wiped his mouth, and stared at her. "You've been acting freaky. Are you high? Can I have some if you are?” - Sara Shepard

73. “Isana laughed. "And you, lady? Are you a woman of conscience or of ambition?"The lady smiled. "That's a question rarely asked here at court.""And why is that?""Because a woman of conscience would tell you that she is a person of conscience. A woman of ambition would tell you that she is a person of conscience—only much more convincingly.” - Jim Butcher

74. “No. It's actually not okay. And I hate when people say that, when they say it's okay even though it's not. It's better to tell the truth.” - Nancy Werlin

75. “When a man is penalized for honesty he learns to lie.” - Criss Jami

76. “There is beauty in truth, even if it's painful. Those who lie, twist life so that it looks tasty to the lazy, brilliant to the ignorant, and powerful to the weak. But lies only strengthen our defects. They don't teach anything, help anything, fix anything or cure anything. Nor do they develop one's character, one's mind, one's heart or one's soul.” - José N. Harris

77. “Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul.” - Patricia Briggs

78. “Lying is the most fun a woman can have without taking her clothes off.” - Natalie Portman

79. “I am a trained professional liar. Do not read me as a textbook.” - Laura Anne Gilman

80. “I was so mad, I reached into the drawer for her fake sushi eraser and put it in my pocket. Serves her right for being such a big, fat, Eggo-scarfing liar.” - Sarah Darer Littman

81. “The thing about lying to your parents is, you have to do it to protect them.It’s for their own good.” - Sophie Kinsella

82. “She looks honestly upset, but then, I’ve learned that I can’t read her. The problem with a really excellent liar is that you have to just assume they’re always lying.” - Holly Black

83. “At first I did not love you, Jude; that I own. When I first knew you I merely wanted you to love me. I did not exactly flirt with you; but that inborn craving which undermines some women's morals almost more than unbridled passion--the craving to attract and captivate, regardless of the injury it may do the man--was in me; and when I found I had caught you, I was frightened. And then--I don't know how it was-- I couldn't bear to let you go--possibly to Arabella again--and so I got to love you, Jude. But you see, however fondly it ended, it began in the selfish and cruel wish to make your heart ache for me without letting mine ache for you.” - Thomas Hardy

84. “To begin with, I had never done any good deeds; besides, even if I had simply fabricated a few, I would not have enjoyed going on about them.” - M. Ageyev

85. “and a charge of lying against someone whom you have always found truthful is a very serious thing; a very serious thing indeed.” - C. S. Lewis

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

87. “Bound by the Oath against lying, Aes Sedai [carry] the half-truth, the quarter-truth and the implication to arts.” - Robert Jordan

88. “For a man who walks in the light, to stay humble is not to walk in the dark; you don't need to project yourself to be thought an honest man.” - Mike Norton

89. “Because I withered under the glare of an actual invitation, I was a firm believer in preventive prevarication--in other words, lying early in order to free myself later on.” - Rachel Cohn

90. “Once you take to the habit of deception, every new lie comes that much easier. Though to me it wasn't so much lies as a matter of judicious editing. We all inevitably present a version of ourselves that is a collection of half-truths and exclusions. The way I saw it, the truth was too complicated, whereas the well-chosen lie would put everyone's mind at ease.” - Caroline Kettlewell

91. “I slowly climbed back to my feet, walked back into the emergency department through the silently swishing glass doors, and, covered in my girlfriend's blood, lied perfectly for the first time in my life. "I tried to stop her.” - Maggie Stiefvater

92. “Sarcasm is when you tell someone the truth by lying on purpose.” - Chuck Klosterman

93. “Alanna didn't approve of lying, but in a pinch a lie was sometimes better than the truth.” - Tamora Pierce

94. “Ralon didn't make anyone else put his tack away?" Alex wanted to know. "You didn't see anything strange?" Alanna didn't look up. "No." It wasn't strange , she excused her lie mentally. Ralon does things like that all the time. ” - Tamora Pierce

95. “I'm sorry," she said humbly. "I haven't wanted to lie to you.""I should hope so. You're the worst liar I've ever met." He thought about it for a moment, then added, "--or the best. Now I'm all confused.” - Tamora Pierce

96. “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

97. “Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.” - Winston S. Churchill

98. “The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying.” - Mark Twain

99. “Fiction may be about lying – on the surface, anyway – but fiction is about hiding the truth behind those lies. It's about using those lies to say something true and real. It's about showing the reader something. It's about making them feel.And how we do that as authors is to put ourselves into our work, and make it mean something to us, so that it will mean something to the reader. That's what we should do. That's our job.” - Stacia Kane

100. “My shining dishonesty will be the salvation of me.” - Diana Wynne Jones

101. “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

102. “Christians don't tell lies they just go to church and sing them.” - A.W. Tozer

103. “For the hackneyed art of lying without injury to anyone, Rushbrook, to his shame, was proficient.” - Elizabeth Inchbald

104. “Oh, the unintended consequences of perfidy!” - Andrew Levkoff

105. “The biggest liar in the world is They Say.” - Douglas Malloch

106. “If a man, who says he loves you, won’t tell you the details of a private conversation between him and another woman you can be sure he is not protecting your heart. He is protecting himself and the women he has feelings for. Wise women simply see things as they are, not as their low self-esteem allows.” - Shannon L. Alder

107. “There is nothing worse for the lying soul than the mirror of reality.” - Steve Maraboli

108. “Resorting to lying or cheating in any competition amounts to conceding defeat.” - George Hammond

109. “Children wear their natures like brightly-colored clothes; that's why they lie so transparently. Adulthood is the art of deceit.” - Robert Charles Wilson

110. “I lied," I said. ..."I know it," he said."Then do something about it. Do anything, just so it's something.""I cant," he said."There aint anything to do? Not anything?""I didn't say that," Grandfather said. "I said I couldn't. You can.""What?" I said. "How can I forget it? Tell me how to.""You cant," he said. "Nothing is ever forgotten. Nothing is ever lost. It's too valuable.""Then what can I do?""Live with it," Grandfather said."Live with it? You mean, forever? For the rest of my life? Not ever to get rid of it? Never? I cant. Dont you see that I cant?""Yes you can," he said. "You will. A gentleman always does. A gentleman can live through anything. He faces anything. A gentleman accepts the responsibility of his actions and bears the burden of their consequences, even when he did not himself instigate them but only acquiesced to them, didn't say No though he knew he should.” - William Faulkner

111. “Lie until even you believe it - that's the real secret of lying” - Holly Black

112. “Were you lying?""I never lie," he said piously. "About what?""The sand, the snake."For a young man who never lied, he seemed surprisingly unoffended by the question.” - Megan Whalen Turner

113. “You're a poster boy for sincerity. You have all the guile of a lamb.” - Dean Koontz

114. “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

115. “Tell me it's not true."He sighed. "Fine. It's not true."...And yet..."Are you lying?"He rolled his eyes. "Of course I'm lying.""Not cool." I muttered.Kyle shrugged. "I didn't want you to start hyperventilating again." His hair fell over his eyes and he brushed it aside. "I figured annoying you was safer than admitting anything.” - Kathleen Peacock

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

117. “Lying didn't feel good; it just felt familiar.” - Adrienne deWolfe

118. “I suppose if we gain anything from this unsought experience it will be an appreciation for honesty- frankness on the part of our politicians, our friends, our loves, ourselves. No more liars in public places. (And the bed and the bar are, in their way, as public as the floor of Congress.)” - Tim O'Brien

119. “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

120. “A lie carries a weight that is exponentially higher than the truth. It’s weight will retard growth directly in proportion to the area lied.” - Howard L. Salter

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

122. “In your novels do you lie deliberately or just out of ignorance?"Laughter. A murmur of approval. The writer hesitated a few seconds. Then counter-attacked:"I'm a liar by vocation," he shouted. "I lie with joy! Literature is the only chance for a true liar to attain any sort of social acceptance."Then more soberly, he added - his voice lowered - that the principal difference between a dictatorship and a democracy is that in the former there exists only one truth, the truth as imposed by power, while in free countries every man has the right to defend his own version of events.Truth, he said, is a superstition.” - José Eduardo Agualusa

123. “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.” - Otto von Bismark

124. “People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election.” - Otto von Bismarck

125. “Lying is easy. But it’s lonely.” - Victoria Schwab

126. “Lies is lying the memory from the truth” - Ahmad Rahmat Ramadhan

127. “Do What?' 'Lie,' he said. 'Why do you fabricate these outlandish stories?''Well,' I wanted to say, 'there are those of us who create because all around us, things visible and invisible are crumbling. We are like the stonemasons of Babylon, forever working, as it says in Jeremiah, to shore up the city of walls.'I didn't say that, of course. What I did say was: 'I don't know.” - Alan Bradley

128. “One human could simply withhold its feelings and intentions from another human by failing to audibilize or it could audibilize things that were not real. The other human would be aware only of what it heard and would change its behavior in response to a nonexistent stimulus. They called it 'lying.” - Robert Buettner

129. “Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.” - Steven Pressfield