Quotes About Deception

People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be until they have learnt to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.

Pacifism, the preaching of peace in the abstract, is one of the means of duping the working class.

There is only what is and that's it. What should be is a dirty lie.

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

Those who rule us have brilliantly applied the maxim that the best defense against truth is the unswerving repetition of lies.

She [Anna] was doing what she always did when she saw him [Vronsky]—comparing the image of him in her imagination (incomparably superior, and impossible in reality) with him as he was.

Acting is a form of deception, and actors can mesmerize themselves almost as easily as an audience.

The shadkhn was impressing the young woman with the boundless virtues of a female and ended: "And to look at, she's a regular picture!" The young man could not wait for his blind date. But when he accosted the shadkhn the next day, his voice was frosty: "Her eyes are crossed, her nose is crooked, and when she smiles one side of her mouth goes down—" "Just a minute," interrupted the shadkhn. "Is it my fault you don't like Picasso?

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!

Anything is better than lies and deceit!

Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

What a strange illusion it is to suppose that beauty is goodness.

Which is worse? the wolf who cries before eating the lamb or the wolf who does not.

One must be cunning and wicked in this world.

And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness. A handsome woman talks nonsense, you listen and hear not nonsense but cleverness. She says and does horrid things, and you see only charm. And if a handsome woman does not say stupid or horrid things, you at once persuade yourself that she is wonderfully clever and moral.

False. Everything by which you have lived and live now is all a deception, a lie, concealing both life and death from you.

We are all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one to do?

What tormented Ivan Ilych most was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and that he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result.

All were happy -- plants, birds, insects and children. But grown-up people -- adult men and women -- never left off cheating and tormenting themselves and one another. It was not this spring morning which they considered sacred and important, not the beauty of God's world, given to all creatures to enjoy -- a beauty which inclines the heart to peace, to harmony and to love.

It begins with Miller the Killer turning his head to see me eating Bolognese from the sick bag. Only he thinks I'm eating…

Your honied words, your honied love. Under all your honey runs a conduit of venom.

It's not that they knew what you were doing exactly. They could feel what you were feeling, and as the lie you were contemplating brought you down, they felt that drain themselves, and thus became more confused and unclear---which was an unconscious signal to them that something was wrong, and that you were probably up to no good. So they backed away.