Quotes About Deception

two chimpanzees were observed maltreating a chicken: One would extend some food to the fowl, encouraging it to approach; whereupon the other would thrust at it with a piece of wire it had concealed behind its back. The chicken would retreat but soon allow itself to approach once again--and be beaten once again. Here is a fine combination of behavior sometimes thought to be uniquely human: cooperation, planning a future course of action, deception and cruelty.

We also know how cruel the truth often is, and we wonder whether delusion is not more consoling. HENRI POINCARÉ (1854–1912)

The chief danger of adopting a credible pose of irrationality is that to succeed in the pretense you have to be very good. After a while, you get used to it. It becomes pretense no longer.

How can you tell when someone is only imagining?

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It's simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we've been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new ones rise.

Una de las lecciones más tristes de la historia es ésta: si se está sometido a un engaño demasiado tiempo, se tiende a rechazar cualquier prueba de que es un engaño.

The lure of the marvelous blunts our critical faculties.

Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers. They introduce an insidious corruption of popular attitudes about scientific objectivity.

Tom Paine wrote in The Age of Reason: Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction.

there would be one more acknowledged instance of the American public being misled or lied to in the interest of national security.

True memories seemed like phantoms, while false memories were so convincing that they replaced reality. GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Strange Pilgrims (1992)

The Cardiff Giant that most Americans have seen is this copy. Barnum exhibited a fake fake.

The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

And therefore I would say that the first thing to do is to realize that governments, all governments, at least on occasion, lie. And some of them do it all the time - some of them do it only every second statement - but, by and large, governments distort the facts in order to remain in office.

Human beings have a demonstrated talent for self-deception when their emotions are stirred

Some portion of the decision-making that influences the future of our civilization is plainly in the hands of charlatans.

Paid product endorsements, especially by real or purported experts, constitute a steady rainfall of deception. They betray contempt for the intelligence of their customers

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

You don't know things anywhere! You live in a dream, you manufacture illusions!

Así es. Todas las muchachas lindas son una trampa y los hombres esperan que lo sean.

In some ways I'm no better than the others, in some ways I'm worse because I'm less alive. Maybe it's being alive that makes them lie, and being almost not alive makes me sort of accidentally truthful - I don't know but - anyway - we've been friends... - And being friends is telling each other the truth...

Entra Tom. Va vestido como un marino mercante. Cruza hasta la escalera de incendios, donde se detiene y enciende un cigarrillo. Se dirige el público.   TOM: Es cierto, me reservo algunos trucos, me guardo algún as en la manga. Pero soy lo contrario de un mago de la escena. Él ofrece una ilusión con apariencia de verdad, yo os entregaré la verdad con el amable disfraz de la ilusión.

This disgust with mendacity is disgust with yourself.