Quotes About Deception

You never know what is going on in someone's head when they you think they are leading the perfect life.

I'm a con artist in that I'm an actor. I make people believe something is real when they know perfectly well it isn't.

If you are supposed to be villainous and have some sort of agenda, I like the idea of delivering that kind of character in a perfectly well-mannered way.

The eating of burning brimstone is an entirely fake performance.

Conspiracies, since they cannot be engaged in without the fellowship of others, are for that reason most perilous; for as most men are either fools or knaves, we run excessive risk in making such folk our companions.

We shall perish by guile just as we slew.

Perjury is the basest and meanest and most cowardly of crimes. What can it do? Perjury can change the common air that we breathe into the axe of an executioner.

The permanent campaign is inherently deceptive.

I was under 18, and to leave Kenya to come to the United States, to get a passport, you had to be 18. So I lied and said I was 19 to get the passport, because otherwise, I had to have permission from my parents, and my parents would never have let me come.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

If we pass now from physical nature to the moral world, we still find ourselves subject to the same deceptions of appearance, to the same influences of spontaneity and habit. But the distinguishing feature of this second division of our knowledge is, on the one hand, the good or the evil which we derive from our opinions; and, on the other, the obstinacy with which we defend the prejudice which is tormenting and killing us.

La démagogie est l'hypocrisie du progrès.

MEETING THE EYE You'll probably find that it suits your book to be a bit cleverer than you look. Observe that the easiest method by far is to look a bit stupider than you are.

There are indeed many wonders, and with regard to the stories people tell one another, it may be that such tales go beyond the true account and, embellished with iridescent lies, beguile them.

That man could hide behind a corkscrew he's so twisted.

The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.

Behold! human beings living in an underground den…. Like ourselves… they see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

How, then, might we contrive… one noble lie to persuade if possible the rulers themselves, but failing that the rest of the city?

The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught in falsehood's school. And the one man who dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool.