Quotes About Deception

Most wars start with a lie, good wars, bad wars, they start with a lie, and the peace that comes afterwards, those promises of forgiveness and cooperation and fair play for all… those are lies too, lies wrapped in hope.

What you loved was the idea of rescuing me. You didn't really love me then, and you don't really love me now.

If you only make it up, you never have to live it down.

Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.

Never be distracted by people's glamorous portraits of themselves and their lives; search and dig for what really imprisons them.

He who poses as a fool is not a fool.

Hide your intentions not by closing up (with the risk of appearing secretive, and making people suspicious) but by talking endlessly about your desires and goals-just not the real ones.

those who make a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all.

Learn to destroy your enemies by opening holes in their own reputations. Then stand aside and let public opinion hang them.

The people around you are generally mysterious. You are never quite sure about their intentions. They present an appearance that is often deceptive—their manipulative actions don't match their lofty words or promises. All of this can prove confusing. Seeing people as they are, instead of what you think they should be, would mean having a greater sense of their motives.

It takes great talent and skill to conceal one's talent and skill. LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, 1613–1680 Halliwell

If you lead the sucker down a familiar path, he won't catch on when you lead him into a trap.

USE SELECTIVE HONESTY AND GENEROSITY TO DISARM YOUR VICTIM JUDGMENT One sincere and honest move will cover over dozens of dishonest ones. Open-hearted gestures of honesty and generosity bring down the guard of even the most suspicious people. Once your selective honesty opens a hole in their armor, you can deceive and manipulate them at will. A timely gift—a Trojan horse—will serve the same purpose.

What if we could find out what causes us to lie about who we are, or to inadvertently push people away?

The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832

A false path in life is generally something we are attracted to for the wrong reasons—money, fame, attention, and so on. If it is attention we need, we often experience a kind of emptiness inside that we are hoping to fill with the false love of public approval.

Remember: The paranoid and wary are often the easiest to deceive. Win their trust in one area and you have a smoke screen that blinds their view in another, letting you creep up and level them with a devastating blow.

We see people not as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

a show or display of innocence are the least innocent of all. The only means to gain one's ends with people are force and cunning. Love also, they say; but that is to wait for sunshine, and life needs every moment. JOHANN VON GOETHE, 1749-1832

you often do not know your friends as well as you imagine. Friends often agree on things in order to avoid an argument. They cover up their unpleasant qualities so as to not offend each other. They laugh extra hard at each other's jokes. Since honesty rarely strengthens friendship, you may never know how a friend truly feels. Friends will say that they love your poetry, adore your music, envy your taste in clothes—maybe they mean it, often they do not. When

when people overtly display some trait, such as confidence or hypermasculinity, they are most often concealing the contrary reality.

The secret enemy, though, will react with anger. Any strong emotion and you will know that there's something boiling under the surface. Often the best way to get people to reveal themselves is to provoke tension and argument.

Seduction is a form of deception, but people want to be led astray, they yearn to be seduced. If they didn't, seducers would not find so many willing victims. Get rid of any moralizing tendencies, adopt the seducer's playful philosophy, and you will find the rest of the process easy and natural.

Spectacle and entertainment, clearly, are excellent devices to conceal your intentions, but they cannot be used indefinitely. The public grows tired and suspicious, and eventually catches on to the trick.