35 Lies Quotes To Reflect On

In a world where truth is often obscured and deception can easily intertwine with our daily lives, understanding the nature of lies is essential. Exploring the spectrum between honesty and deceit, we can gain valuable insights through the wisdom of others. Our curated collection of the top 35 lies quotes is designed to inspire reflection and provoke thought, shedding light on the various facets of falsehoods and integrity. Join us on this introspective journey as we uncover the truths embedded within these powerful words.

1. “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” - Walter Langer

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

3. “If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.” - W. Somerset Maugham

4. “In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.” - Dean Koontz

5. “lies, truth, loveI have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of it's charms.” - Giacomo Casanova

6. “Promises are lies wrapped in pretty ribbons -Cinnamon” - V.C. Andrews

7. “Why, when people are leaving their partners because they're having an affair with someone else, do they think it will seem better to pretend there is no one else involved? Do they think it will be less hurtful for their partners to think they just walked out because they couldn't stand them any more and then had the good fortune to meet some tall Omar Sharif-figure with a gentleman's handbag two weeks afterwards while the ex-partner is spending his evenings bursting into tears at the sight of the toothbrush mug? It's like those people who invent a lie as an excuse rather than the truth, even when the truth is better than the lie.” - Helen Fielding

8. “Many truths which are not believed are called lies,' the Laughing Beast said. 'Mirrors do not themselves lie unless they have been enchanted. Ordinary mirrors merely reflect what is revealed to them. People lie and mirrors reflect people. If your mother feared mirrors in your land, she feared herself.” - Isobelle Carmody

9. “And what if we’d been utterly open? Made jokes about the first wife? What if we’d been that kind of family? Well, I would have been different, surely. But not because I knew the secret. For it wasn’t the secret—the secret that wasn’t a secret anyway—that led to the austerity in our lives. It was the austerity that led to the secret. And what I had been marked by, probably most of all, was the austerity. It had made secrets in my life too. Or silences, anyway, that became secrets. That became lies. ” - Sue Miller

10. “Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try.” - Tom Holt

11. “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

12. “To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again: and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself -- that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word 'doublethink' involved the use of doublethink.” - George Orwell

13. “I can't stand lies. Probably no one can. Probably everyone is, to varying degrees, allergic to them, both spiritually and physically. Lies make me feel low and ignoble, and also itchy, like there's sand under my skin. The only thing that feels worse than hearing a lie is telling one.” - Marisa de los Santos

14. “A bitter reality of truth can be wisely told in a sweet tale of lullaby.” - Toba Beta

15. “America's intellectual community has never been very bright. Or honest. They're all sheep, following whatever the intellectual fashion of the decade happens to be. Demanding that everyone follow their dicta in lockstep. Everyone has to be open-minded and tolerant of the things they believe, but God forbid they should ever concede, even for a moment, that someone who disagrees with them might have some fingerhold of truth.” - Orson Scott Card

16. “But I lived a lie. I lived it out of anger. This is what I am trying to tell you. I have lived lies. I have done it again and again. I live lies because I cannot endure the weakness of anger and I cannot admit the irrationality of love. Oh the lies I have told myself and others. I knew it yet I didn't know.” - Anne Rice

17. “Sometimes the truth has difficulty breaching the city walls of our beliefs. A lie, dressed in the correct livery, passes through more easily.” - Rachel Hartman

18. “Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees” - Dee Remy

19. “Photography is without mercy--though it's nonsense to say it does not lie. Rather, it lies in a particular, capricious way which makes beggars of ministers and gods of cat's meat men.” - Nick Harkaway

20. “The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.” - Mitch Albom

21. “I don't want to see it anymore. It's lousy. And it's a cheat. You build it all around something... set yourself on something... and then you don't want it. Isn't it too bad the great truths are all such lies?” - Stephen King

22. “And yes, we do have some food. Maybe you'd like to join us? Unless you want to stick with your sheep sushi.” - Michael Grant

23. “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

24. “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’."(on Lillian Hellman)” - Mary McCarthy

25. “But tales like this must not be taken as truth. You must remind yourself that it is hard to tell where truth ends and a lie begins. So listen all you like, but disbelieve all you hear...You are in the city of lies.” - Arlene J. Chai

26. “Lying is the new truth.” - B. Cameron Lee

27. “Ask a burning question, get a burning answer” - Lynda Barry

28. “This story in my head is too hot to touch. I grabbed it anyway.” - Adele Griffin

29. “From time to timeI once wondered how one wanders from time to timeAnd think up the paradox lineSpeak of Epoch's crimeOh I lied, it hasn't happened yetBut bet you better believe it's such a habit thatI just said that in a past mindset” - Criss Jami

30. “Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth.” - Theresa Breslin

31. “See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort.” - Dorothy L. Sayers

32. “Lies are convenient when the truth is unfathomable.” - Courtney M. Privett

33. “The darkness always lies.” - Anthony Liccione

34. “He manages a sad smile. “An omission is not the same thing as a lie, Miss Bishop. It’s a manipulation.” - Victoria Schwab

35. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Often, love is a tangled web of lies that only a broken heart would weave. Seldom is dishonesty the whole person, rather it's the pain.” - Shannon L. Alder