No Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour. ~Thomas CarlyleSo rid yourselves of all badness and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all backbiting. ~Saint PeterFalse words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil. ~Plato
Dishonesty a lack of honesty or integrity. Accusing a person of dishonesty implies a general tendency be deceptive rather than sincere.
You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.
Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits…. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind.
Edmund Burke, "Letters on a Regicide Peace," letter 3, 1796–1797,The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke (1899), vol. 5, p. 414
Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.
Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported. ~Frederick Douglass
You will destroy those who speak lies. Jehovah detests violent and deceptive people.
Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported.
In the majority of cases which are brought to me as a consulting psychologist for love and marital adjustment, there are self-deceptions to be uncovered as well as attempts to deceive other people. Beneath such love conflicts there is almost always a festering psychological core of dishonesty.
The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies.
The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever.
The Gospel of Philip, as translated by M. Meyer, inThe Nag Hammadi Scriptures (2007), p. 163
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
The world is still deceiv'd with ornament, In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?
I think the inherent right of the Government to lie to save itself when faced with nuclear disaster is basic.
Arthur Sylvester, speech at a meeting of the New York chapter of Sigma Delta Chi, New York City (December 6, 1962), as reported byThe Washington Post (December 7, 1962), p. A–2
A lie has no legs, and cannot stand; but it has wings, and can fly far and wide.
George and Eliot Warburton,Hochelaga; or, England in the New World: Volume 1 (1846), p. 215. Identified by the author as a Chinese proverb, but not found earlier than this publication; variously misattributed to other authors, and altered to expressions such as: "When Falsehood saw he had no legs to stand on, he made himself wings" (UN Monthly Chronicle: Volume 6 (1969), credited as "an old Jewish rabbinical saying").
I never lie, even to this day. Not even a little. Unless you count playing pranks on people, which I don't. That's comedy. Entertainment doesn't count. A joke is different from a lie, even if the difference is kind of subtle.
Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul.
Robert Burton,The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), Part III, Section IV, Memb. 1, Subsect. 2
Populus vult decipi; decipiatur.
The people wish to be deceived; let them be deceived.
Cardinal Carafa, Legate of Paul IV., is said to have used this expression in reference to the devout Parisians. Origin in De Thou. I, XVII. See Jackson'sWorks, Book III, Chapter XXXII. Note 9
Improbi hominis est mendacio fallere.
It is the act of a bad man to deceive by falsehood.
You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.
Attributed toAbraham Lincoln but denied by Spofford.P. T. Barnum is accepted as the author. Said to have been quoted by Lincoln in a speech at Clifton, Ill., Sept. 8, 1858. Found in Bassett's scrap-book, June, 1905, p. 134
It is vain to find fault with those arts of deceiving, wherein men find pleasure to be deceived.
John Locke,Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter X. 34
Where the lion's skin falls short it must be eked out with the fox's.
Lysander; remark upon being told that he resorted too much to craft.Plutarch,Life of Lysander
He seemed For dignity compos'd and high exploit: But all was false and hollow.
Wisdom and truth, the offspring of the sky, are immortal; while cunning and deception, the meteors of the earth, after glittering for a moment, must pass away.
Lie not, neither to thyself nor men nor God. Let mouth and heart be one — beat and speak together, and make both felt in action. It is for cowards to lie.