Quotes About Deception

I was nuts about him. Know what he did to me. First he gave me a phony name. Second, he was already married. Third, the minute the preacher said amen, he never did another tap of work. Then he stole my TV set and gave it to a car hop. When I asked him about that, he hit me with a chicken.

There is a cunning, which we in England call, the turning of the cat in the pan; which is, when that which a man says to another, he lays it as if another had said it to him. And to say truth, it is not easy, when such a matter passed between two, to make it appear from which of them it first moved and began.

Nothing doth more hurt in a state, than that cunning men pass for wise.

If a man would cross a business, that he doubts some other would handsomely and effectually move, let him pretend to wish it well, and move it himself in such sort as may foil it.

Some build rather upon the abusing of others, and (as we now say) putting tricks upon them, than upon soundness of their own proceedings.

Let us consider the false appearances that are imposed upon us by words, which are framed and applied according to the conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort; and although we think we govern our words, and prescribe it well ... yet certain it is that words, as a Tartar's bow, do shoot back upon the understanding of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.

A lot of rappers lie about who and what they are.

You can't even tell, but a lot of the time your favourite rappers are wearing a bunch of fake jewellery.

It's very rare that people are exactly who they appear to be.

Financial innovation is an oxymoron. It's very rare that there is something that's actually financial innovation. It's a euphemism for hiding leverage.

Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

Why do we never expect dull people to be rascals?

You dirty, double-crossing rat.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Very bad things follow when we kid ourselves that we're naturally rational, rather than the more humbling truth: naturally emotional.

You cannot 'rationalize' what is not rational to begin with - as if lying were called 'truthization.' There is no way to obtain more truth for a proposition by bribery, flattery, or the most passionate argument - you can make more people believe the proposition, but you cannot make it more true.

Your ability to rationalize your own bad deeds makes you believe that the whole world is as amoral as you are.

The highest reach of injustice is to be deemed just when you are not.

I know of no sentence that can induce such immediate and brazen lying as the one that begins, 'Have you read - .'

The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to their dream.

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

The art of reading between the lines is as old as manipulated information.

Every journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.