Quotes About Deception

Trouble is, just because things are obvious doesn't mean they're true.

YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES. So we can believe the big ones? YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.

Things are not as they seem. They are what they are.

Little fussy Otto, in his red-lined black opera cloak with pockets for all his gear, his shiny black shoes, his carefully cut widow's peak and, not least, his ridiculous accent that grew thicker or thinner depending on who he was talking to, did not look like a threat. He looked funny, a joke, a music-hall vampire. It had never previously occurred to Vimes that, just possibly, the joke was on other people.

He said to people: you're free. And they said hooray, and then he showed them what freedom costs and they called him a tyrant and, as soon as he'd been betrayed, they milled around a bit like barn-bred chickens who've seen the big world outside for the first time, and then they went back into the warm and shut the door...

Tell someone you are going to rob them and all that will happen is that you'll get a reputation as a truthful man.

Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.

I know about people who talk about suffering for the common good. It's never bloody them! When you hear a man shouting Forward, brave comrades! you'll see he's the one behind the bloody big rock and the wearing the only really arrow-proof helmet!

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable. Amazing.

Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It's lying, only for a better class of people.

There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another--language was just there to hide their thoughts.

You can't trust folk songs. They always sneak up on you.

When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

When they're laughing at you, their guard is down. When their guard is down, you can kick them in the fracas.

And then she woke up and it was all a dream.' It was just about the worst ending you could have to any story.

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word commence in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say Enter, don't stop to pack.

He was certain he was anorectic, because every time he looked in a mirror he saw a fat man. It was the Archchancellor, standing behind him and shouting at him.

Don't trust the cannibal just 'cos he's usin' a knife and fork!

Just because a woman's got no teeth doesn't mean she's wise. It might just mean she's been stupid for a very long time.

She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. Amazingly, she'd apparently been able to keep this a secret from people.

I thought dwarfs loved gold, said Angua. They just say that to get it into bed.

Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

She wore so much thick white makeup in order to conceal her naturally rosy complexion that if she turned around suddenly her face would probably end up on the back of her head.

The truly smart, having discovered they are cleverer than the people around them, soon learn that the smartest thing of all for them to do is to prevent said people from ever finding this out.