Lies Quotes

“I want you to lie to me just as sweetly as you know how for the rest of my life.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gatsby Girls

“A father is a reality-concealing machine, a machine for dishing up lies to kids, and that isn't even the worst of it: secretly he believes that he represents reality.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“It requires as much caution to tell the truth as to conceal it.”
― Baltasar Gracian

“How do I know you're not crazy?" she asks. "How do I know you're not the craziest dude I've ever met?"
"You'll have to test me out."
"You have my info," she says. "I'll think about it."
"Rain," I say. "That's not your real name."
"Does it matter?"
"Well, it makes me wonder what else isn't real."
"That's because you're a writer," she says. "That's because you make things up for a living."
"And?"
"And"-- she shrugs--"I've noticed that writers tend to worry about things like that.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms

“Since the 1980s, therapists have reported encountering clients or patients who had experienced extreme abuses featuring physical, sexual, emotional, spiritual, and cognitive aspects, along with a premeditated structure of torture-enforced lessons. The phenomena was first labeled "ritual abuse," and, later, as our understanding developed, "mind control.”
― Alison Miller, Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

“Lies I've told my 3 year old recently

Trees talk to each other at night.

All fish are named either Lorna or Jack.

Before your eyeballs fall out from watching too much TV, they get very loose.

Tiny bears live in drain pipes.

If you are very very quiet you can hear the clouds rub against the sky.

The moon and the sun had a fight a long time ago.

Everyone knows at least one secret language.

When nobody is looking, I can fly.

We are all held together by invisible threads.

Books get lonely too.

Sadness can be eaten.

I will always be there.”
― Raul Gutierrez

“Who lies for you will lie against you.”
― Bosnian Proverb

“Let every
writer
tell his
own
lies
That's freedom
of the
press.”
― Norman Mailer, Deaths For The Ladies

“[Internationa] Aid is just another praetorian business enterprise.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

“People with red hair are supposed to get mad very easily,...,and he had very red hair.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

“For the first time I understood the dogma of eternal pain -- appreciated "the glad tidings of great joy." For the first time my imagination grasped the height and depth of the Christian horror. Then I said: "It is a lie, and I hate your religion. If it is true, I hate your God."

From that day I have had no fear, no doubt. For me, on that day, the flames of hell were quenched. From that day I have passionately hated every orthodox creed. That Sermon did some good.

In the Old Testament, they said. God is the judge -- but in the New, Christ is the merciful. As a matter of fact, the New Testament is infinitely worse than the Old. In the Old there is no threat of eternal pain. Jehovah had no eternal prison -- no everlasting fire. His hatred ended at the grave. His revenge was satisfied when his enemy was dead.

In the New Testament, death is not the end, but the beginning of punishment that has no end. In the New Testament the malice of God is infinite and the hunger of his revenge eternal.

The orthodox God, when clothed in human flesh, told his disciples not to resist evil, to love their enemies, and when smitten on one cheek to turn the other, and yet we are told that this same God, with the same loving lips, uttered these heartless, these fiendish words; "Depart ye cursed into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."

These are the words of "eternal love."

No human being has imagination enough to conceive of this infinite horror.

All that the human race has suffered in war and want, in pestilence and famine, in fire and flood, -- all the pangs and pains of every disease and every death -- all this is as nothing compared with the agonies to be endured by one lost soul.

This is the consolation of the Christian religion. This is the justice of God -- the mercy of Christ.

This frightful dogma, this infinite lie, made me the implacable enemy of Christianity. The truth is that this belief in eternal pain has been the real persecutor. It founded the Inquisition, forged the chains, and furnished the fagots. It has darkened the lives of many millions. It made the cradle as terrible as the coffin. It enslaved nations and shed the blood of countless thousands. It sacrificed the wisest, the bravest and the best. It subverted the idea of justice, drove mercy from the heart, changed men to fiends and banished reason from the brain.

Like a venomous serpent it crawls and coils and hisses in every orthodox creed.

It makes man an eternal victim and God an eternal fiend. It is the one infinite horror. Every church in which it is taught is a public curse. Every preacher who teaches it is an enemy of mankind. Below this Christian dogma, savagery cannot go. It is the infinite of malice, hatred, and revenge.

Nothing could add to the horror of hell, except the presence of its creator, God.

While I have life, as long as I draw breath, I shall deny with all my strength, and hate with every drop of my blood, this infinite lie.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“To get what we want we must be subtle as snakes; more deadly, more cunning, more patient, more mean. Think of the serpent, how it slithers through the garden. It's such a beautiful creature, slow and delicate, rarely seen but effective, low, and not loved, but gloriously efficient! The serpent is now our model; we must pattern our work after him. So go to your old friends and stand by their sides. Pretend you want to help them while whispering deceits in their ears. Only lie when you have to. Speak the truth when you can; for the truth, once it's twisted, is the most effective tool we have. Coat your lies with enough truth, and they will swallow it down.

Now listen to me, people, for this is the key - evil can be twisted into virtue if you phrase it just right. Any vice is acceptable if you cloak it as an issue of freedom. Any immorality is worth fighting for it you tell them they are fighting for choice, if you wrap it in the mantle of privacy and freedom. So take their moral agency and turn it on them. But be patient. . . be patient. . . it takes time to turn the truth upside down.”
― Chris Stewart

“Sometimes a policeman must confront people about lying. No one likes to be called a liar. But it is what it is! A fact is a fact! If someone is a liar, put them on notice. You should not be punished for doing the right thing. It is the job of a good investigator to get the truth.”
― C Snyder

“According to the gospels, Christ healed diseases, cast out devils, rebuked the sea, cured the blind, fed multitudes with five loaves and two fishes, walked on the sea, cursed a fig tree, turned water into wine and raised the dead.

How is it possible to substantiate these miracles?

The Jews, among whom they were said to have been performed, did not believe them. The diseased, the palsied, the leprous, the blind who were cured, did not become followers of Christ. Those that were raised from the dead were never heard of again.
Can we believe that Christ raised the dead?

A widow living in Nain is following the body of her son to the tomb. Christ halts the funeral procession and raises the young man from the dead and gives him back to the arms of his mother.

This young man disappears. He is never heard of again. No one takes the slightest interest in the man who returned from the realm of death. Luke is the only one who tells the story. Maybe Matthew, Mark and John never heard of it, or did not believe it and so failed to record it.

John says that Lazarus was raised from the dead.

It was more wonderful than the raising of the widow’s son. He had not been laid in the tomb for days. He was only on his way to the grave, but Lazarus was actually dead. He had begun to decay.

Lazarus did not excite the least interest. No one asked him about the other world. No one inquired of him about their dead friends.
When he died the second time no one said: “He is not afraid. He has traveled that road twice and knows just where he is going.”

We do not believe in the miracles of Mohammed, and yet they are as well attested as this. We have no confidence in the miracles performed by Joseph Smith, and yet the evidence is far greater, far better.

If a man should go about now pretending to raise the dead, pretending to cast out devils, we would regard him as insane. What, then, can we say of Christ? If we wish to save his reputation we are compelled to say that he never pretended to raise the dead; that he never claimed to have cast out devils.

We must take the ground that these ignorant and impossible things were invented by zealous disciples, who sought to deify their leader. In those ignorant days these falsehoods added to the fame of Christ. But now they put his character in peril and belittle the authors of the gospels.

Christianity cannot live in peace with any other form of faith. If that religion be true, there is but one savior, one inspired book, and but one little narrow grass-grown path that leads to heaven.

Why did he not again enter the temple and end the old dispute with demonstration? Why did he not confront the Roman soldiers who had taken money to falsely swear that his body had been stolen by his friends? Why did he not make another triumphal entry into Jerusalem? Why did he not say to the multitude: “Here are the wounds in my feet, and in my hands, and in my side. I am the one you endeavored to kill, but death is my slave”? Simply because the resurrection is a myth. The miracle of the resurrection I do not and cannot believe.

We know nothing certainly of Jesus Christ. We know nothing of his infancy, nothing of his youth, and we are not sure that such a person ever existed.

There was in all probability such a man as Jesus Christ. He may have lived in Jerusalem. He may have been crucified; but that he was the Son of God, or that he was raised from the dead, and ascended bodily to heaven, has never been, and, in the nature of things, can never be, substantiated.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“I'm so tired of people who can't be honest. "Beauty is on the inside" Really?? Then why do rich guys & successful guys always end up with beautiful women but they have lousy personalities?.”
― Colin Cowherd, You Herd Me!: Things About Sports and Life I Think but Probably Shouldn't Say

“Be careful of the lie you believe about yourself, sooner or later, you will be convinced of it.”
― Saji Ijiyemi, Don't Die Sitting

“Lying isn't something you should be proud of, but be grateful if you've gained a talent for doing it correctly.”
― Kate C. Conner

“Of course the theologians fought the facts found by the geologists, the scientists, and sought to sustain the sacred Scriptures. They mistook the bones of the mastodon for those of human beings, and by them proudly proved that "there were giants in those days." They accounted for the fossils by saying that God had made them to try our faith, or that the Devil had imitated the works of the Creator.

They answered the geologists by saying that the "days" in Genesis were long periods of time, and that after all the flood might have been local. They told the astronomers that the sun and moon were not actually, but only apparently, stopped. And that the appearance was produced by the reflection and refraction of light.

They excused the slavery and polygamy, the robbery and murder upheld in the Old Testament by saying that the people were so degraded that Jehovah was compelled to pander to their ignorance and prejudice.

In every way the clergy sought to evade the facts, to dodge the truth, to preserve the creed.

At first they flatly denied the facts -- then they belittled them -- then they harmonized them -- then they denied that they had denied them. Then they changed the meaning of the "inspired" book to fit the facts. At first they said that if the facts, as claimed, were true, the Bible was false and Christianity itself a superstition. Afterward they said the facts, as claimed, were true and that they established beyond all doubt the inspiration of the Bible and the divine origin of orthodox religion.

Anything they could not dodge, they swallowed and anything they could not swallow, they dodged.

I gave up the Old Testament on account of its mistakes, its absurdities, its ignorance and its cruelty. I gave up the New because it vouched for the truth of the Old. I gave it up on account of its miracles, its contradictions, because Christ and his disciples believe in the existence of devils -- talked and made bargains with them. expelled them from people and animals.

This, of itself, is enough. We know, if we know anything, that devils do not exist -- that Christ never cast them out, and that if he pretended to, he was either ignorant, dishonest or insane.”
― Robert G. Ingersoll

“Lies are like anchovies in a Caesar salad. You may not be able to see them, but your soul knows they are there.”
― Molly Friedenfeld, The Book of Simple Human Truths

“But evil is always illusion. It insists on the lie that we can have something for ourselves. This is the sole principle at work in hell. Lucifer chose to believe it; or, since it is unimaginable that he actually could have believed it, then we may say that he chose to pretend it might be. Very well, says Truth, you may pretend this. But the pretense will be, literally, your undoing. It will unmake you. You will have opted for something that is not, namely, a lie. Hell is built of lies.”
― Thomas Howard, Evangelical Is Not Enough: Worship of God in Liturgy and Sacrament

“I can’t”… “It’s not possible”… “I’m not good enough”... ~ These are lies the demons of your past use to scare away the possibilities of the present.”
― Steve Maraboli

“Nobody's truly free. Everyone is prisoner to a secret, a sin, a lie. It wasn't by accident that, in the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could attain it.”
― J. Matthew Nespoli

“A house made of ice in the middle of desert! And that house is the house of lies!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“She said that you--"
"I don't care what she said." I stand up. "Everyone lies."
"Hey," he says softly. "It's just a code."
"No. Everyone lies." I stub the cigarette out.
"It's just another language you have to learn." Then he delicately adds, "I think you need some coffee, dude." Pause. "Why are you so angry?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, Imperial Bedrooms

“It was after a Frontline television documentary screened in the US in 1995 that the Freyds' public profile as aggrieved parents provoked another rupture within the Freyd family, when William Freyd made public his own discomfort.
'Peter Freyd is my brother, Pamela Freyd is both my stepsister and sister-in-law,' he explained. Peter and Pamela had grown up together as step-siblings. 'There is no doubt in my mind that there was severe abuse in the home of Peter and Pam, while they were raising their daughters,' he wrote. He challenged Peter Freyd's claims that he had been misunderstood, that he merely had a 'ribald' sense of humour. 'Those of us who had to endure it, remember it as abusive at best and viciously sadistic at worst.' He added that, in his view, 'The False memory Syndrome Foundation is designed to deny a reality that Peter and Pam have spent most of their lives trying to escape.' He felt that there is no such thing as a false memory syndrome.' Criticising the media for its uncritical embrace of the Freyds' campaign, he cautioned:

That the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been able to excite so much media attention has been a great surprise to those of us who would like to admire and respect the objectivity and motive of people in the media. Neither Peter's mother nor his daughters, nor I have wanted anything to do with Peter and Pam for periods of time ranging up to two decades. We do not understand why you would 'buy' into such an obviously flawed story. But buy it you did, based on the severely biased presentation of the memory issue that Peter and Pam created to deny their own difficult reality.

p14-14 Stolen Voices: An Exposure of the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony”
― Judith Jones Beatrix Campbell

“They were Catholic, my lovers,

All in an access of crossing themselves,

Particularly their fingers

Behind their suspendered backs--

And that was the women.”
― Shay Caroline, Gemini/Scorpio/Capricorn

“Nothing is Lie until you get to know the truth, as nothing is false in Dream until you get to know that i'm Dreamer.”
― The Ek

“Lies are like poison. If you get a little bit in your system, it spreads until it destroys you”
― Nikki Rae, Sun Poisoned

“...the terrible crumple and blanch of a lie come undone...”
― Ann Patchett, Run

“Even coal shimmers in the light”
― Jocelyn Murray