38 Quotes About Liars

In a world where honesty often feels like a rare commodity, navigating through deceit and mistrust can be challenging. Whether you've encountered a fib from a friend or a more serious betrayal, the sting of dishonesty is something most people know too well. To shed light on the complexities of truth and mendacity, we've put together a curated collection of the top 38 quotes about liars. These powerful words from various thinkers, writers, and influencers offer insights, reflection, and perhaps a bit of solace as we all strive to discern truth in our daily lives. Dive in and let these quotes inspire a deeper understanding of the nuances of honesty.

1. “The clergy are, practically, the most irresponsible of all talkers.["Evangelical Teaching: Dr. Cumming," The Westminster Review, 1885.]” - George Eliot

2. “Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild...” - Mary Karr

3. “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

4. “Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of what I have been and what I am? Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” - Albert Camus

5. “The household was pervaded by this atmosphere of a calm adult woman and a man who gave into animal impulses. She reported to him in great detail what her analyst ... said about his binges and his hostility; she used Charley's money to pay Dr. Andrews to catalog his abnormalities. And of course Charley never heard anything directly from the doctor; he had no way of keeping her from reporting what served her and holding back what did not. The doctor, too, had no way of getting to the truth of what she told him; no doubt she only gave him the facts that suited her picture, so that the doctor's picture of Charley was based on what she wanted him to know. By the time she had edited both going and coming there was little of it outside her control.” - Philip K. Dick

6. “oaths and anchors equally will drag: naught else abides on fickle earth but unkept promises of joy.” - Herman Melville

7. “Some people, from what I've seen, boo, when they lie, they become very still and centered and their gaze very concentrated and intense. They try to dominate the person they lie to. The person to whom they're lying. Another type becomes fluttery and insubstantial and punctuates his lie with little self-deprecating motions and sounds, as if credulity were the same as pity. Some bury the lie in so many digressions and asides that they like try to slip the lie in there through all the extraneous data like a tiny bug through a windowscreen ... Then there are what I might call your Kamikaze-style liars. These'll tell you a surreal and fundamentally incredible lie, and then pretend a crisis of conscience and retract the original lie, and then offer you the like they really want you to buy instead, so the real lie'll appear a some kind of concession, a settlement with through. That type's mercifully easy to see through ... Or then the type who sort of overelaborates on the lie, buttresses it with rococo formations of detail and amendment, and that's how you can always tell ... So Now I've established a subtype of the over-elaborator type. This is the liar who used to be an over-elaborator and but has somehow snapped to the fact that rococo elaborations give him away every time, so he changes and now lies tersely, sparely, seeming somehow bored, like what he's saying is too obviously true to waste time on.” - David Foster Wallace

8. “If you look up "charming" in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?” - Deb Caletti

9. “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

10. “Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought.To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears.To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool.To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen.To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies.To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.” - Octavia E. Butler

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

12. “LIBERTY! FREEDOM! DEMOCRACY!True anyhow no matter how manyLiars use those words.” - Langston Hughes

13. “If there was one thing worse than being cheated, it was being cheated by someone who referred to themselves in the third person.” - Chris Wooding

14. “If pregnant girls were sinner, what were liars called?” - Holly Cupala

15. “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

16. “But he that sows lies in the end shall not lack of a harvest, and soon he may rest from toil indeed, while others reap and sow in his stead.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

17. “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

18. “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

19. “Hypocrites get offended by the truth.” - Jess C. Scott

20. “I wonder if you can taste the bullsh*t that's coming out of your mouth.” - Habeeb Akande

21. “Once upon a time I was such a good liar; I could talk the fish right into my mouths.” - Vernor Vinge

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

23. “What would you think if I told you that I wasn’t an Allomancer?” Sazed asked.“I’d think that you were lying,” Vin said.“Have you known me to lie before?”“The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.” - Brandon Sanderson

24. “Like the layers of an onion, under the first lie is another, and under that another, and they all make you cry.” - Derrick Jensen

25. “In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.” - Robert McKee

26. “Relationships with negative people are simply tedious encounters with porcupines. You don’t have the remote knowledge how to be close to them without quills being shot in your direction.” - Shannon L. Alder

27. “Often people that say they “don’t care” actually do. The moment they discuss you with their friends and family, compete with you, bad mouth you to others or react to anything you do or say is when they give themselves away. You can either be saddened or flattered that you effected someone so much. The perspective is yours to determine.” - Shannon L. Alder

28. “Stupidity is to have amnesia over your own faults when the person you hate makes theirs.” - Shannon L. Alder

29. “Intending to run ahead of everyone is not an obstacle to fall behind. Streets are full of liars.” - Enver Aysever

30. “99% of all addicts are liars and thieves. This might sound unfair and even close-minded, but it's the truth. There are some exceptions to the rules, but they are incredibly rare. Most people are no match for their addictions. They will be driven to do things they would normally never have considered all in the name of getting high. Sad, but true. So if you're thinking of trying drugs, keep in mind that all the people you will be dealing with are likely to steal from you and lie to you at your own expense.” - Ashly Lorenzana

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

32. “Yet simple souls, their faith it knows no stint:Things least to be believed are most preferred.All counterfeits, as from truth's sacred mint,Are readily believed if once put down in print” - John Clare

33. “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

34. “You don’t have to feed the lie if you don’t want it to. If you make it credible it will become that, but only in your mind and only as disproportionate as you’ve decided it is. Truth has a way of being more persistent and if the two ever meet, truth will win.” - Howard L. Salter

35. “Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears” - Nassim Nicholas Taleb

36. “All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.” - Aminatta Forna

37. “A coward talks to everyone but YOU.” - Shannon L. Alder

38. “Bullshit is as common as lame poetry and more unavoidable thanthose armed men who are there to protect you from Bullshit like this is straight from the lab and god loves you andthe government doesn't want war and it's the best movie since Repo Man and if i stopped drinking the world might end anyway and breathanarianism and immortality for anything besides Bullshit that's as common as murder and jailhouse tattoos selling bunk drugs in paint chip hotels where a cigarette burn on the mattress tells you more about death than a splatter movie festival.” - Sparrow 13 Laughingwand