A Quote by Baltasar Gracian

Don't lie, but don't tell the whole truth.

Baltasar Gracian

Quote Topics

Don't Lie Lie Tell Truth Whole Whole Truth

Quote Author

Baltasar Gracian
Spanish - Philosopher
January 8, 1601 - December 6, 1658

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Robert A. Heinlein

I can't lie - I have one of those faces where you can tell. It's expressive and lends itself to being cheeky. I always tell the truth even when I should probably tell a white lie.

Jessica Barden

The first step toward telling the truth is to tell the whole lie.

Robert Breault

People on the Continent either tell you the truth or lie; in England they hardly ever lie, but they would not dream of telling you the truth.

George Mikes

Picasso said, 'Art is a lie that tells the truth.' What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

Nicolas Cage

Picasso said art is a lie that tells the truth. What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it?

Nicolas Cage

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speakes he lies.

Franz Kafka

If you don't tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth about your own life, someone may claim the right to tell it for you.

Lucinda Roy

A lie is profanity. A lie is the worst thing in the world. Art is the ability to tell the truth.

Richard Pryor

I get paid to lie to people as an actor. Country music is the one area that I don't lie. I tell the truth.

Christian Kane

I'm plotting revolution against this lie that the majority has a monopoly of the truth. What are these truths that always bring the majority rallying round? Truths so elderly they are practically senile. And when a truth is as old as that, gentlemen, you can hardly tell it from a lie.

Henrik Ibsen

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.

Umberto Eco

Glorify a lie, legalize a lie, arm and equip a lie, consecrate a lie with solemn forms and awful penalties, and after all it is nothing but a lie. It rots a land and corrupts a people like any other lie, and by and by the white light of God's truth shines clear through it, and shows it to be a lie.

Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

Mort Sahl

It is worse for a liar to tell the truth than for a lover of truth to lie.... There is a truth which is of Satan. Its essence is that under the semblance of truth it denies everything that is real. It lives upon hatred of the real world which is created and loved by God.