80 Deception Quotes To Ponder

In our journey through life, we often encounter moments of deception, whether in relationships, politics, or even self-reflection. These instances can teach us valuable lessons, provoke critical thinking, and shape our understanding of the world. To explore this intricate theme, we've carefully selected a collection of 80 thought-provoking quotes on deception. These quotes, penned by philosophers, writers, and thinkers across the ages, offer wisdom and insights that invite us to ponder the complexities of honesty, trust, and betrayal. Dive into this curated selection and let these words inspire deeper contemplation on the nuances of deception.

1. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.” - Walter Scott

2. “Her words were like tinfoil; they shone and they covered things up.” - Helen Cross

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

4. “I am not good at deception,' said Tuesday gloomily, flushing.Right, my boy, right,' said the President with a ponderous heartiness, 'You aren't good at anything.” - G.K. Chesterton

5. “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!” - Noel Langley

6. “Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.” - Khaled Hosseini

7. “Nothing could be taken for granted. Women who loved you tried to cut your throat, while women who didn't even know your name scrubbed your back. Witches could sound like Katharine Hepburn and your best friend could try to strangle you. Smack in the middle of an orchid there might be a blob of jello and inside a Mickey Mouse doll, a fixed and radiant star.” - Toni Morrison

8. “Almost all people are hypnotics. The proper authority saw to it that the proper belief should be induced, and the people believed properly.” - Charles Fort

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

10. “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

11. “The keepers would give the gorillas an assortment of fruits and vegetables each afternoon, and on this particular occasion, Judy Sievert tossed Nina an apple, which rolled away. Instead of going to get it, Nina just 'sat there sadly,' in Judy's words. Judy continued her rounds, handing out yams and apples to the other gorillas, but Nina sat there looking appleless and downtrodden. Taking pity, Judy tossed her another apple. As soon as Nina had it, she got up and went over to where the first apple had rolled away, taking it too.” - Eugene Linden

12. “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” - Oscar Wilde

13. “Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she wonders if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observe even as it conceals depths and current below.” - Anita Shreve

14. “I feel incendiary, a wildfire. My spirit licks at the gates of a very elaborate, customized, and distracting emotional Hades.” - Suzanne Finnamore

15. “Très, très, triste...” - Suzanne Finnamore

16. “I used to loathe ambivalence; now I adore it. Ambivalence is my new best friend.” - Suzanne Finnamore

17. “Yes. THANK YOU. And say hello to Judas Iscariot.” - Suzanne Finnamore

18. “I love you as the mother of my child": the kiss of death.Mother of His Child: demotion. I am beginning to see this truism: Mothers are not always wives. I have been stripped of a piece of self.” - Suzanne Finnamore

19. “He announces that lately he keeps losing things. "Like your wife and child," I want to say, but don´t. At fourty, I´ve learned not to say everything clever, not to score every point.” - Suzanne Finnamore

20. “I´ve blown it, the whole grisly charade.” - Suzanne Finnamore

21. “I remember one desolate Sunday night, wondering: Is this how I´m going to spend the rest of my life? Marrid to someone who is perpetually distracted and somewhat wistful, as though a marvelous party is going on in the next room, which but for me he could be attending?” - Suzanne Finnamore

22. “So many events and moments that seemed insignificant add up. I remember how for the last Valentine´s Day, N gave flowers but no card. In restaurants, he looked off into the middle distance while my hand would creep across the table to hold his. He would always let go first. I realize I can´t remember his last spontaneous gesture of affection.” - Suzanne Finnamore

23. “The snag about marriage is, it isn´t worth the divorce.” - Suzanne Finnamore

24. “We talk. Darlene worries aloud that her husband works with a lot of attractive young women; she herself is fourty. I tell her it´s not about age. "Little thing called character," I say, thinking, Accepting marital advice from me: the height of lunacy.” - Suzanne Finnamore

25. “Surprises, I feel now, are primarily a form of violence.” - Suzanne Finnamore

26. “How do you know? How best to ensure his nervous breakdown?" I ask."Keep going," Christian says. "Just go on as if nothing has happened. We all hate that.” - Suzanne Finnamore

27. “The Betty Lady explains love and splitting up: "It´s like playing the shell game with Jesus. You can´t figure anything out; it´s best not to try. You´ll just humiliate yourself.” - Suzanne Finnamore

28. “To keep myself from harming or calling N and to stave off the rage and despair, I focus on my extraordinary son, drink midrange Chardonnay every night after he is asleep, and make a barrage of late-night mail-order retail purchases placed from the couch. The couch has officially become my second battle station. I am angry and I have credit And I´m all blackened inside; I should wear a pointy witch hat around Larkspur as I go to the bank and drop A off at day care. It would be more honest.” - Suzanne Finnamore

29. “God is great and God is good," Lisa says. "But where are the Apache attack helicopters when you need them?” - Suzanne Finnamore

30. “I´m just not sending out the right vibe lately. Perhaps the fact that I wear stained sweatpants and free T-shirts is holding me back. I just can´t seem to get back into the intelligent-slut-for-hire outfits that lure men; even shoes with laces evade me. Plus my hair is Fran Lebowitz-esque. I think my eyes are getting closer together. I don´t know.” - Suzanne Finnamore

31. “An Idea is nothing but Information, It won't do us any harm until we accept it as perception of truth in our mind, which in time will potentially evolve and construct major events in history.” - Djayawarman Alamprabu

32. “Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.” - Thomas Hobbes

33. “Some things just couldn't be protectd from storms. Some things simply needed to be broken off...Once old thing were broken off, amazingly beautiful thing could grow in their place.” - Denise Hildreth

34. “The final portrait is often furthest from the truth.” - Dave Cullen

35. “And when I speak, I don't speak as a Democrat. Or a Republican. Nor an American. I speak as a victim of America's so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy - all we've seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don't see any American dream. We've experienced only the American nightmare.” - Malcolm X

36. “I looked at Mum and realized -- twang! -- that she was telling an untruth. A big untruth. And I remember thinking in that instant how thrilling and grown-up it must be to say something so completely untrue, as opposed to the little amateur fibs I was already practiced at -- horrid little apprentice sinner that I was --like the ones about you'd already said your prayers or washed under the fingernails. Yes, I was impressed. I too must learn to say these gorgeous untruths. Imaginary kings and queens would be my houseguests when I was older.” - Christopher Buckley

37. “I'll say this, Arik: the old man's warning proved to be true - things are not always what they seem. She was no young lady -" "If it's the demon you speak of," interjected Rith, as she stepped back into the ruin, Lyssa following after, "she was not even a toothless old hag.” - Dennis L. McKiernan

38. “I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth--then shut up.” - Robert A. Heinlein

39. “Be careful who influence and inspire your life. Their ways seem like leading to life but the truth is, they lead to eternal death” - Ann Marie Aguilar

40. “Betrayal and dishonor is usually an inside job. Keep it 'sucka-free', loved one!” - T.F. Hodge

41. “Like antidepressants, a substantial part of the benefit of psychotherapy depends on a placebo effect, or as Moerman calls it, the meaning response. At least part of the improvement that is produced by these treatments is due to the relationship between the therapist and the client and to the client's expectancy of getting better. That is a problem for antidepressant treatment. It is a problem because drugs are supposed to work because of their chemistry, not because of the psychological factors. But it is not a problem for psychotherapy. Psychotherapists are trained to provide a warm and caring environment in which therapeutic change can take place. Their intention is to replace the hopelessness of depression with a sense of hope and faith in the future. These tasks are part of the essence of psychotherapy. The fact that psychotherapy can mobilize the meaning response - and that it can do so without deception - is one of its strengths, no one of its weaknesses. Because hopelessness is a fundamental characteristic of depression, instilling hope is a specific treatment for it it. Invoking the meaning response is essential for the effective treatment of depression, and the best treatments are those that can do this most effectively and that can do without deception.” - Irving Kirsch

42. “Where utopianism is advanced through gradualism rather than revolution, albeit steady and persistent as in democratic societies, it can deceive and disarm an unsuspecting population, which is largely content and passive. It is sold as reforming and improving the existing society's imperfections and weaknesses without imperiling its basic nature. Under these conditions, it is mostly ignored, dismissed, or tolerated by much of the citizenry and celebrated by some. Transformation is deemed innocuous, well-intentioned, and perhaps constructive but not a dangerous trespass on fundamental liberties.” - Mark R. Levin

43. “Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.” - Ashly Lorenzana

44. “Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” - Criss Jami

45. “We’re a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.” - Scott Lynch

46. “If the map doesn't agree with the ground the map is wrong” - Gordon Livingston

47. “Guard yourself from lying; there is he who deceives and there is he who is deceived.” - Sextus

48. “Love is beautiful,A beautiful deception.One falls in itTo deceive the other” - Amit Abraham

49. “I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.” - Osamu Dazai

50. “The power to lead is the power to mislead, and the power to mislead is the power to destroy.” - Thomas S. Monson

51. “The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.” - Michael Connelly

52. “We tell you, tapping on our brows,The story as it should be,As if the story of a houseWere told or ever could be.” - Edwin Robinson

53. “People trust their eyes above all else - but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there” - Zoë Marriott

54. “Mindfulness helps us get better at seeing the difference between what’s happening and the stories we tell ourselves about what’s happening, stories that get in the way of direct experience. Often such stories treat a fleeting state of mind as if it were our entire and permanent self.” - Sharon Salzberg

55. “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” - Andre Malraux

56. “Deception is mostly a game we play with ourselves.” - Terry Brooks

57. “Je découvris qu'en bluffant les psychiatres on pouvait tirer des trésors inépuisables de divertissement gratifiants: vous les menez habilement en bateau, leur cachez soigneusement que vous connaissez toutes les ficelles du métier; vous inventez à leur intention des rêves élaborés, de purs classiques du genre qui provoquent chez eux, ces extorqueurs de rêves, de tels cauchemars qu'ils se réveillent en hurlant; vous les affriolez avec des "scènes primitives" apocryphes; le tout sans jamais leur permettre d'entrevoir si peu que ce soit le véritable état de votre sexualité. En soudoyant une infirmière, j'eus accès à quelques dossiers et découvris, avec jubilation, des fiches me qualifiant d' "homosexuel en puissance" et d' "impuissant invétéré". Ce sport était si merveilleux, et ses résultats - dans mon cas - si mirifiques, que je restai un bon mois supplémentaire après ma guérison complète (dormant admirablement et mangeant comme une écolière). Puis j'ajoutai encore une semaine rien que pour le plaisir de me mesurer à un nouveau venu redoutable, une célébrité déplacée (et manifestement égarée) comme pour son habileté à persuader ses patients qu'ils avaient été témoins de leur propre conception.” - Vladimir Nabokov

58. “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

59. “allow me now to return to the cottagers, whose story excited in me such various feelings of indignation, delight, and wonder, but which all terminated in additional love and reverence for my protectors (for so I loved, in an innocent, half painful self-deceit, to call them).” - Mary Shelley

60. “A lie's true power cannot be accurately measured by the number of people who believe its deception when it is told, it must be measured by the number of people who will go out after hearing it trying to convince others of its truth.” - Dennis Sharpe

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

62. “Strange how things turn out. Two birds, one stone and all that.' McBlane chuckled at his own impromptu joke. 'But things have worked out for the best and now we all get to work together,' he said, and a smile spread across his face as easy as a politician's lie.” - R.D. Ronald

63. “I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.” - Patrick Rothfuss

64. “A true master will not deceive an able disciple. You are hampered by the limits you set and no limit can be set on skill.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

65. “Some people in your lifeTouch you so very deeplyThat you drown totally in that depth.” - Amit Abraham

66. “Deception sneaks in through the window of pride.” - Evinda Lepins

67. “Injured SoulFainted EyesReturningfrom where?Weary feetWeak armsTreadingtoward where?Struggledin vain battlesFightingdelusive enemiesErred bya deceptionThe ancient deception” - Rixa White

68. “No denial of the truth will ever invalidate it.” - Nikki Rosen

69. “To deceive oneself is worse than to deceive others." These harsh words pierced me to the core.” - Shinichi Suzuki

70. “I love that she loves me a 10, on a 5-point scale. Well, I know it’s a 5-point scale, though I asked her on a 1-100 scale.

” - Dark Jar Tin Zoo

71. “Orange Juice? Sure. Toast? Sure. One last time on the couch? Sure. Phone number? Sure. See you again? Oooh, absolutely. That was the lie I told. Probably not, that was the truth, that was that which went unspoken.” - T. Scott McLeod

72. “To the man of science, on his unassuming and laborious travels, which must often enough be journeys through the desert, there appear those glittering mirages called 'philosophical systems'; with bewitching deceptive power they show the solution of all enigmas and the freshest draught of the true water of life to be near at hand; his heart rejoices, and it seems to the weary traveller that his lips already touch the goal of all the perseverance and sorrows of the scientific life... Other natures again, may well grow exceedingly ill-humoured and curse the salty taste which these apparitions leave behind in the mouth and from which arises a raging thirst – without one having been brought so much as a step nearer to any kind of spring.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

73. “This monograph by Special Agent Ken Lanning (1992) is merely a guide for those who may investigate this phenomenon, as the title indicates, and not a study. The author is a well known skeptic regarding cult and ritual abuse allegations and has consulted on a number of cases but to our knowledge has not personally investigated the majority of these cases, some of which have produced convictions. p179[refers to Lanning, K. V. (1992)Investigator's guide to allegations of "ritual" child abuse. Quantico, VA: National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.]” - Pamela Sue Perskin

74. “The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful.” - Bertrand Russell

75. “Beware when wrong-doing is called good and right-doing is called evil.” - R. Alan Woods

76. “I have led you down a road of deception just to correct you and make you look like an uneducated ass” - Ashley Newell

77. “The most common sort of lie is that by which a man deceives himself: the deception of others is a relatively rare offense.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

78. “Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep;And in his simple show he harbours treason.” - William Shakespeare

79. “The purple, formalized, iridescent, gelatinous bladder of a Portuguese man-of-war was floating close beside the boat. It turned on its side and then righted itself. It floated cheerfully as a bubble with its long deadly purple filaments trailing a yard behind in the water.” - Ernest Hemingway

80. “Mundus vult decipi'—the world wants to be deceived. To live without deception presupposes standards beyond the reach of most people whose existence is largely shaped by compromise, evasion and mutual accommodation. Could they face their weakness, their vanity and selfishness, without a mask?” - Abraham Joshua Heschel