Dishonesty Quotes

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”
― Plato

“Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.”
― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People

“Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.”
― Criss Jami

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.”
― Bertrand Russell, New Hopes for a Changing World

“Lying is done with words, and also with silence.”
― Adrienne Rich, Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying

“I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all.”
― Jody Gehrman, Babe in Boyland

“There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.”
― Erich Fromm, Man for Himself: An Inquiry into the Psychology of Ethics

“Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad.”
― Henry Kissinger

“[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.”
― Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
’twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.”
― William Shakespeare, Othello

“And not only the pride of intellect, but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Politics: “Poli” a Latin word meaning "many" and "tics" meaning "bloodsucking creatures".”
― Myron Fagan

“Some people think they can find satisfaction in good food, fine clothes, lively music, and sexual pleasure. However, when they have all these things, they are not satisfied. They realize happiness is not simply having their material needs met. Thus, society has set up a system of rewards that go beyond material goods. These include titles, social recognition, status, and political power, all wrapped up in a package called self-fulfillment. Attracted by these prizes and goaded on by social pressure, people spend their short lives tiring body and mind to chase after these goals. Perhaps this gives them the feeling that they have achieved something in their lives, but in reality they have sacrificed a lot in life. They can no longer see, hear, act, feel, or think from their hearts. Everything they do is dictated by whether it can get them social gains. In the end, they've spent their lives following other people's demands and never lived a life of their own. How different is this from the life of a slave or a prisoner?”
― Liezi, Lieh-tzu: A Taoist Guide to Practical Living

“There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.”
― Ralph Moody

“How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"

"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that..."

"Everythings going to be alright.”
― Brian K. Vaughan, Runaways, Vol. 1: Pride and Joy

“Being nice merely to be liked in return nullifies the point.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.”
― William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

“He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it the second time.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“One is what one is, and the dishonesty of hiding behind a degree, or a title, or any manner and collection of words, is still exactly that: dishonest.”
― Kay Redfield Jamison, An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness

“Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.”
― Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion

“I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.”
― Tom Clancy

“If you wear a mask for too long, there will come a time when you can not remove it without removing your face.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“The trouble with excuses, however, is that they become inevitably difficult to believe after they’ve been used a couple of times.”
― Scott Spencer

“Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Tolerance! The virtue that makes one bite his tongue so that he can tear out his hair.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person must have one of two qualities: either he is unscrupulously ambitious, or he is unswervingly egocentric. He must believe that for his ends to be served all things and people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he is the center not only of his own world but of the worlds which others inhabit.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.”
― Carl Lotus Becker, The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers

“Honesty whispers, "Don't get pricked by the thorns of lie.”
― Angelica Hopes

“Never ever seek for gratefulness from mankind, you shall always see ungratefulness. Do what you must do as a solemn duty and that is what you have to do!”
― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

“Mundus vult decipi. The world winks at dishonesty. The world does not call it dishonesty.”
― Martin Buber, I and Thou