Having been lied into a war principally by Kennedy … all the way through by Johnson and Nixon the people began to look more sceptically at the government. Christopher Hitchens, with Pat Buchanan, CSpan 1993
You can tell the deepest truths with the lies of fiction. Isabel Allende
Lies, damned lies and statistics. Author Unknown, probably false attribution to Benjamin Disraeli; viz also Mark Twain
Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented. Georges Braque
He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. Charles Peguy
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. Joseph Goebbels, misattributed
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, for the truth. Alfred Adler
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. H L Mencken, 1880-1956, US editor
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you would lie if were in his place. H L Mencken
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes. Mark Twain, attributions & variations
The motto stated a lie. If this nation has ever trusted in God, that time has gone by; for nearly half a century almost its entire trust has been in the Republican party and the dollar – mainly the dollar. I recognize that I am only making an assertion and furnishing no proof; I am sorry, but this is a habit of mine; sorry also that I am not alone in it; everybody seems to have this disease. Mark Twain in Eruption
The Bible has noble poetry in it ... and some good morals and a wealth of obscenity, and upwards of a thousand lies. Mark Twain
The truth has no defense against a fool determined to believe a lie. Mark Twain
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
The most offensive is not their lying – one can always forgive lying – lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth – what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth. William Faulkner
It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth. Ally Carter, Heist Society
All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. Paul Broun, cited Los Angeles Times 7th October 2012
How will the ships navigate without stars? And then he remembered that the stars were dead, long dead, and the light they shed was not to be trusted, was false, if not an outright lie, and in any case was inadequate, unequal to its task, which was to illuminate the evil that men did. Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness. Henrik Ibsen, The Wild Duck, 1884
According to a recent survey men say the first thing they notice about a woman is the eyes; and women say the first thing they notice about men is they’re a bunch of liars. Clare Short
I’ve fought three duels over ladies. I’ve walked out on twelve ladies. Nine ladies have walked out on me. Oh I used to be an idiot. Got crushes on them, whispered sweet nothings, clicked my heels, bowed and scraped, fell in love, suffered, sighed in the moonlight, froze up, melted in puddles ... Dark eyes, red lips, dimples in the cheeks ... All women are pretentious, affected, hateful, gossipy liars to the marrow of their bones. Vain, petty, merciless, they can’t think straight ... Pure crocodile. Chekhov: Comedy Shorts: The Bear starring Julian Barratt & Julia David & Reece Shearsmith, Sky Arts 2010
They’ll tell you to doomsday they’re defending your liberties. They’re lying! Aaron Russo, Mad as Hell
I got a call one day from an attorney woman I knew and she said would you like to meet one of the Rockefellers? I said, sure I’d love to. And er we [Nicholas Rockefeller] became friends, and erm, he began to divulge a lot of things to me. So he said to me one night, he said, that there’s going to be an event, Aaron. And out of that event you’re going to see we are going into Afghanistan so we can run pipelines from the Caspian Sea. We are going to go into Iraq to take the oil and establish a base in the Middle East, and we are going to go into Venezuela and then try to get rid of Chavez. And the first two they’ve accomplished – Chavez they didn’t accomplish – and er he said you’re going to see guys going into caves looking for [laughs], looking for people that they’re never going to find. You know, he was laughing about the fact that you have this War on Terror – there’s no real enemy – he is talking about how by having this War on Terror you can never win it because it’s an eternal war – and so you can always keep taking people’s liberties away. And I said, How are you going to convince people that this war is real? He said, by the media. The media can convince everybody that it’s real. I mean, you keep talking about things. You keep saying it over and over and over again and eventually people believe this. You created the Federal Reserve in 1913 through lies. You create 9/11 which is another lie. Through 9/11 then you fight a War on Terror, and now all of a sudden you go into Iraq which was another lie. And now they’re gonna do Iran. So one thing leading to another leading to another. I would say, What are you doing this for? What’s the point of this thing? You have all the money in the world you’d ever want, you have all the power. I said, you know, you are hurting people – it’s not a good thing. And he would say, what do you care about the people for? Take care of yourself and take care of your family. And then I said to him, what are the ultimate goals here? He said, the ultimate goal is to get everybody in this world chipped with an RFID chip and have all the money on those chips. And everything on those chips. And if anyone wants to protest, what we do, or violate what we want, we just turn off their chip. Aaron Russo, interview Alex Jones
What price are we paying for lying to children about Santa Claus? It may be steeper than we think. Because the myth panders to childhood credulity, some have implicated it in the rising incidence of scientific illiteracy among the young. Because it encourages children to build their world views on authority, not on independent thinking, others have related it to the abysmal judgment supposedly displayed by young adults. Can parents honestly be surprised when children do not consult them before experimenting with sex, drugs, crime, or destructive relationships – so soon after their parents have made it clear that children cannot trust them to provide accurate knowledge of the world? A Christian parent put the issue clearly in a letter to the editor:
‘Certainly we can’t get away with lies for seven to ten years and then expect children to ‘outgrow’ Santa ... then suddenly expect them to believe us when we mention high intensity moral issues.
‘Simply being honest with our children, in my opinion, would outweigh anything Santa ever brought’. Tom Flynn, The Trouble with Christmas
A priest who told youngsters that Santa Claus is dead and that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doesn’t exist was acting on his ‘zeal to emphasize the spiritual dimension’ of Christmas, church officials said Tuesday.
The Diocese of Metuchen issued a statement to clarify comments by the Reverend Romano Ferraro at the St John Vianney Roman Catholic Church in Colonia [New Jersey] on Saturday.
Ferraro also had said that parents who tell their children Santa exists are liars.
‘He tried to kill Santa,’ said Joanne Apolonia, a mother who attended the weekend Mass at the Church with her ‘Confraternity of Christian Doctrine’ class. That’s how the kids took it.’ Associated Press article Christmyth reprinted The Arizona Republic 10th December 1986, ‘Priest Says Parents Lie, Santa Dead’
This is a film about trickery, fraud, about lies. F for Fake 1974 starring Orson Welles & Oja Kodar & Joseph Cotten & Francois Reichenbach & Richard Wilson & Paul Stewart & Peter Bogdanovich & William Allan & Jean-Pierre Aumont & Elmyr de Hory & Clifford Irving et al, director Orson Welles
The author of Fake, a book about a faker, was himself a faker – Clifford Irving – and the author of a fake. ibid.
The restless souls being I guess Cliff Irving over there and Elmyr. Coincidence #1: that these two world leaders in fakery operated quite separately on the same tiny island. ibid.