It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

- Anne Sullivan

Actions lie louder than words.

- Carolyn Wells

The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.

- Andre Gide

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

- Abraham Maslow

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

- Abraham Lincoln

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion.

- Mohandas K. Gandhi

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

- Otto von Bismarck

A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt to be dangerous.

- Alfred Adler

The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.

- Leonardo da Vinci

Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear.

- Hannah Arendt

Truthfulness has never been counted among the political virtues, and lies have always been regarded as justifiable tools in political dealings.

- Hannah Arendt

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

- Abraham Lincoln

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual.

- Thomas Jefferson

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

- Carl Sagan

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic

- John F. Kennedy

Always tell the truth. That way, you don't have to remember what you said.

- Mark Twain



A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble. (a combination of Proverbs 12:22 and Psalms 46:1)

- Anonymous



He who is not sure of his memory should not undertake the trade of lying.

- Michel de Montaigne



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. (attributed)

- Abraham Lincoln



It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.

- Noam Chomsky



For those who stubbornly seek freedom, there can be no more urgent task than to come to understand the mechanisms and practices of indoctrination. These are easy to perceive in the totalitarian societies, much less so in the system of 'brainwashing under freedom' to which we are subjected and which all too often we sere as willing or unwitting instruments.

- Noam Chomsky



To rationalize their lies, people -- and the governments, churches, or terrorist cells they compose -- are apt to regard their private interests and desires as just.

- Wendy Kaminer



Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson



When in doubt, tell the truth.

- Mark Twain



Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

- George Eliot



Lying is done with words and also with silence.

- Adrienne Rich



Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!

Marmion. Canto vi. Stanza 17.

- Sir Walter Scott



If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

- Virginia Woolf



There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. [attributed, perhaps incorrectly, by Mark Twain]

- Benjamin Disraeli



People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

- Otto von Bismarck



A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

- Mark Twain



Son, always tell the truth. Then you'll never have to remember what you said the last time.

- Sam Rayburn



Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

- Demosthenes