Quotes About Deception

There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.

Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.

You can't pray a lie.

It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings nor dukes at all, but just low-down humbugs and frauds.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.

Presently a serpent sought them out privately, and came to them walking upright, which was the way of serpents in those days. The serpent said the forbidden fruit would store their vacant minds with knowledge. So they ate it, which was quite natural, for man is so made that he eagerly wants to know; whereas the priest, like God, whose imitator and representative he is, has made it his business from the beginning to keep him from knowing any useful thing.

I sometimes wonder if our world leaders are very smart and just putting us on, or very stupid and mean it.

History is strewn thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill, but a lie, well told, is immortal.

An enemy can partly ruin a man, but it takes a good-natured injudicious friend to complete the thing and make it perfect.

It had not occurred to anybody in the crowd—that simple trick of inquiring about somebody who wasn't ten thousand miles away.  The magician was hit hard; it was an emergency that had never happened in his experience before, and it corked him; he didn't know how to meet it.

She was as simple-hearted and honest as the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered together her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed with death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with hell following after.

I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So

I know now that all that glitters is not gold... However, I still go underrating men of gold, and glorifying men of mica. Commonplace human nature cannot rise above that.

Why shouldn't we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all?

Tout les jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice!

There are," said Twain, "certain sweet-smelling, sugarcoated lies current in the world which all politic men have apparently tacitly conspired together to support and perpetuate… We are discreet sheep; we wait to see how the drove is going and then go with the drove. We have two opinions: one private, which we are afraid to express, and another one -- the one we use -- which we force ourselves to wear to please Mrs. Grundy.

My complaint simply concerns the decay of the _art_ of lying.

Tom got out a bit of paper and carefully unrolled it. Huckleberry viewed it wistfully. The temptation was very strong. At last he said: Is it genuwyne? Tom lifted his lip and showed the vacancy. Well, all right, said Huckleberry, it's a trade. Tom enclosed the tick in the percussion-cap box that had lately been the pinchbug's prison, and the boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before.

If we never lied , there would be nothing to remember.

People don't really read your books, they only say they do, to keep you from feeling bad.

Like many other simple-hearted souls, it was her pet vanity to believe she was endowed with a talent for dark and mysterious diplomacy, and she loved to contemplate her most transparent devices as marvels of low cunning. Said

We were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be done. It was only another delusion—a painting by some ingenious artist with little charity in his heart for tired folk.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition; there are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.