Quotes About Deception

It's a terrible thing, to lie. It's a field you keep seeding and watering and plowing, but nothing will ever grow on it.

Maybe she was really good at improv. I couldn't be certain she was nineteen or that her name really was Nora Halliday. Maybe she was like one of those sweaters with an innocent little thread hanging off of it: One pull, the whole thing unraveled.

Every paradise has its viper.

Marisha Pessl

How much sense would it make, after all, for someone involved with a kidnapping to draw attention to himself by claiming to be a witness and telling an elaborate lie?

Nobody ever tells you when you go into police work that it will require dishonesty.

she'd had to play along, to pretend—convincingly—sympathy and even amity.

Katie assured him that she was professionally nonjudgmental—which was not true; she was the opposite and was revolted by his crimes.

One of its analysts was Daniel Ellsberg, who at the time was back in the States compiling the report that—after he leaked it to the press in 1971—would become known as The Pentagon Papers. The study showed that American leaders had been systematically lying about the scope and progress of the war for years and had consistently enlarged it despite doubts that the effort could succeed.

Two hundred and fifty American marines and soldiers were killed, and 1,554 wounded.75 Another 458 ARVN soldiers were killed and an estimated 2,700 wounded. The Front's losses are estimated to have been between 2,400 and 5,000—the difference between the official counts of both sides, both known to lie about such numbers. When

He was so out of step with the youthful antiwar fervor of the period that he enlisted in the army at the height of the Vietnam War, only to be thrown out for lying about his age, education, and criminal past.

The absurd body counts and kill ratios were proof of his leadership. He sold them to LBJ, who in turn presented them as fact to the American people.

anyone who asserts so often that he is telling the truth probably isn't.

Part of being a Christian is recognizing that sin deceives us, and we need other believers to help us see the things we cannot see about ourselves. Joining a church, I've often said, is like throwing paint on the invisible man. New sins become visible in the course of our discipling relationships.

as John Calvin rightly said, the human heart is an idol factory.

many believers naively assume that real Christianity is alive and well and respected by the majority of our people. Brace yourself. It's an illusion.

Busy work often looks more like work than real work does

I wondered whether Mrs. Shears had told the police that I had killed Wellington and whether, when the police found out that she had lied, she would go to prison. Because telling lies about people is called slander.

sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

And they'll vote for me because I'm the best liar, because I do it honestly, with a certain finesse. They know that lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.

What is apparent is not always what is true.

lies and truth are very close, and that something beautiful rests between.

Jamming was our ally. It made people curious about what we were hiding.

the poor were duped into fighting to defend the privileges of the rich.