A Quote by Mark Twain

Among other common lies, we have the silent lie - the deception which one conveys by simply keeping still and concealing the truth. Many obstinate truth-mongers indulge in this dissipation, imagining that if they speak no lie, they lie not at all.

Mark Twain

Quote Topics

Among Common Concealing Deception Dissipation Imagining Indulge Indulge In Keeping Lie Lies Many Obstinate Other Silent Simply Speak Still Truth Which

Quote Author

Mark Twain
American - Writer
November 30, 1835 - April 21, 1910

The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth, and truth be defamed as lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world - and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end - is being destroyed.

Hannah Arendt

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

Don't tell me of deception; a lie is a lie, whether it be a lie to the eye or a lie to the ear.

Samuel Johnson

That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright, But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he doesn't care much about the truth or about me, and his self interest, which he worships, tells him to lie, and so it comes about that given his psychology, it is a forgone conclusion that he will lie to me. I think in this case he is still blameworthy, and that implies, among other things, that he did something he ought not do.

Nomy Arpaly

If you're defending a lie, you can only defend it with obfuscations and other lies. You can't defend a lie with the truth.

Harvey Bialy

Governments lie; bankers lie; even auditors sometimes lie: gold tells the truth.

William Rees-Mogg

Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart; My silent heart, lie still and break: Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed For a dream's sake.

Christina Rossetti

they may all be drunk at my place, but they're all honest, and though we do lie-because I lie, too-in the end we'll lie our way to the truth

Fyodor Dostoevsky

That is why I think, in defiance of Plato, that there is at once error and vulgarity in saying that poetry is a lie, except in the sense that Cocteau wrote one day: I am a lie who always tells the truth. The only poetry which lies purely and simply is academic, pseudo-classical, conceptually repetitive poetry, and it is not poetry.

Jacques Maritain

What I've discovered is that in art, as in music, there's a lot of truth-and then there's a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It's the moment that the audience falls in love.

Lady Gaga

Man demands truth and fulfills this demand in moral intercourse with other men; this is the basis of all social life. One anticipates the unpleasant consequences of reciprocal lying. From this there arises the duty of truth. We permit epic poets to lie because we expect no detrimental consequences in this case. Thus the lie is permitted where it is considered something pleasant. Assuming that it does no harm, the lie is beautiful and charming.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It has no reason to fear the truth. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand. A propaganda that lies proves that it has a bad cause. It cannot be successful in the long run.

Joseph Goebbels

I always know a lie when I hear it, and the effect it has on me is no good at all. I go berserk just forcing myself not to go berserk, just trying to see truth in the lie, to see it in full context, and in a dimension in which it has got to be more than just a lie, possibly the profoundest kind of truth.