Quotes About Deception

A guy walks into a bar and orders a drink. After a few more he needs to go to the can. He doesn't want anyone to steal his drink so he puts a sign on it saying, "I spat in this beer, do not drink!" He returns a few minutes later to find another sign saying, "So did I!

Sometimes I think the urge to believe in our own worldview is our most powerful intellectual imperative, the mind's equivalent of feeding, fighting, and fornicating. People will eagerly twist facts into wholly unrecognizable shapes to fit them into existing suppositions. They'll ignore the obvious, select the irrelevant, and spin it all into a tapestry of self-deception, solely to justify an idea, no matter how impoverished or self-destructive.

Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world.

Even the lies were true.

She's not buying [the lie], but there's nothing else on the shelves.

But Billy had done good deeds all the time. So had John Wayne Gacy, and dozens of others. It didn't matter. It was all part of the disguise. Jazz realized that he couldn't trust even his noblest impulses. They might not be genuine. They might just be camouflage.

It was like playing checkers, only to learn that your opponent was playing chess all along.

He fucked my wife!" George wailed. "He ruined my life!" "Your wife was a goddamn whore!

Well, of course it was Billy screwing with his mind. That's what Billy did. Dear Old Dad had a PhD in mind screwing. The question was, was it just Billy screwing with his mind?

His safe haven had turned into an ambush.

I know it doesn't matter what I've promised because I will not live to have the conversation in the first place. I'm so good at pretending. I'm a liar. I've lied to everyone. To every person in my life, to everyone I know. I've never told the truth. I've lied to them all. [...] Everyone keeps saying that if I could remember, it would help. That's what they've said all along. And the thing is this: I remember doing it. I remember every single bit of it.

disguising yourself wasn't just about making yourself look different; it was about making yourself look different from what people were looking for.

They sent spies", Gramma went on, her voice a hush, "and they look like one man, but they can split into two, then four, and so on. I've seen it before. During the war. It's a Communist trick and they taught it to the Democrats so that they could take our guns. I would have fought them off, but they already made the shotgun disappear.

I could have lied to you. It would have been a lot easier. I could have told you I was gay. Or blamed my dad, or my religion. I could have said that I had a boyfriend back in Baltimore. Because guys will listen when you tell them you belong to someone else. Like, you'll respect some made-up guy, but not me. I thought you were different. I trusted you. I told you the truth.

The clause "whose inside is not like his outside" is used elsewhere in the Talmud (b. Yoma "The Day" 72b) to indicate a person who puts on a nice show for others that does not conform to his inner, true self—a morally deceptive person in other words.

The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.

Blessed are the weak who think that they are good because they have no claws.

The greatest secret of monarchic rule...is to keep men deceived and to cloak in the specious name of religion the fear by which they must be checked, so that they will fight for slavery as they would for salvation, and will think it not shameful, but a most honorable achievement, to give their life and blood that one man may have a ground for boasting.

Blessed are the weak who think they are good because they have no claws.

Fear, f-e-a-r, is: False Evidence Appearing Real

Glorious empires can be founded on crime, and noble religions on imposture.

Evil comes up softly like a flower.

The sad thing about artificial intelligence is that it lacks artifice and therefore intelligence.

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models.