Sunday, August 18, 2019 – All Those Lies
President Trump’s proclivity for spouting exaggerated numbers, unwarranted boasts and outright falsehoods has continued at a remarkable pace. As of Aug. 5, his 928th day in office, he had made 12,019 false or misleading claims, according to the Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president has uttered. ~ Washington Post, August 12, 2019
The rulers of the state are the only persons who ought to have the privilege of lying, either at home or abroad; they may be allowed to lie for the good of the state. ~ Plato
People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war, or before an election. ~ Otto von Bismarck
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence. ~ John Adams
Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes. ~ Winston Churchill
Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in. ~ Harry S. Truman
Clinton lied. A man might forget where he parks or where he lives, but he never forgets oral sex, no matter how bad it is. ~ Barbara Bush
George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie. ~ Mark Twain
I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won’t. ~ Mark Twain
People are so docile right now. It is almost as if good government means when the politicians lie to us for our own good, for the public good, and bad government is when politicians lie for their own selfish interests. ~ James Bovard
The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way. ~ Samuel Butler
It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. ~ Samuel Johnson
Lying is an elementary means of self-defense. ~ Susan Sontag
Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology. ~ Mason Cooley
The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone’s comfort. ~ Katherine Dunn
Lying has a kind of respect and reverence with it. We pay a person the compliment of acknowledging his superiority whenever we lie to him. ~ Samuel Butler
There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them – and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth. ~ Stephen King, Needful Things
The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time, and then shut up. ~ Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land
The most common lie is that in which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
I lie to myself all the time. But I never believe me. ~ S. E. Hinton
The reason I talk to myself is because I’m the only one whose answers I accept. ~ George Carlin
The wise thing is for us diligently to train ourselves to lie thoughtfully, judiciously; to lie with a good object, and not an evil one; to lie for others’ advantage, and not our own; to lie healingly, charitably, humanely, not cruelly, hurtfully, maliciously; to lie gracefully and graciously, not awkwardly and clumsily; to lie firmly, frankly, squarely, with head erect, not haltingly, tortuously, with pusillanimous mien, as being ashamed of our high calling. ~ Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying
The highest perfection of politeness is only a beautiful edifice, built, from the base to the dome, of graceful and gilded forms of charitable and unselfish lying. ~ Mark Twain, On the Decay of the Art of Lying
Lying increases the creative faculties, expands the ego, and lessens the frictions of social contacts. ~ Clare Boothe Luce
Politeness is half good manners and half good lying. ~ Mary Wilson Little
On the whole, lying is a cheerful affair. Embellishments are intended to give pleasure. People long to tell you what they imagine you want to hear. They want to amuse you; they want to amuse themselves; they want to show you a good time. This is beyond hospitality. This is art. ~ Isabel Fonseca
You think it’s because they’re lying? Nonsense! I like it when people lie! Lying is man’s only privilege over all other organisms. If you lie you get to the truth! Lying is what makes me a man. Not one truth has ever been reached without first lying fourteen times or so, maybe a hundred and fourteen, and that’s honorable in its way… but we can’t even lie with our own minds! Lie to me, but in your own way, and I’ll kiss you for it. Lying in one’s own way is almost better than telling the truth in someone else’s way; in the first case you’re a man, and in the second – no better than a bird! The truth won’t go away, but life can be nailed shut; there are examples. Well, so where are we all now? With regard to science, development, thought, invention, ideals, aspirations, liberalism, reason, experience, and everything, everything, everything, we’re all, without exception, still sitting in the first grade! We like getting by on other people’s reason. We’ve acquired a taste for it! Right? Am I right? ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Crime and Punishment
“I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don’t have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think? Well, tell me!” His brother was silent and Edward went on: “If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what you really thought, you would enter into a serious conversation with a madman and you yourself would become mad. And it is the same way with the world that surrounds us. If I obstinately told a man the truth to his face, it would mean I was taking him seriously. And to take something so unimportant seriously means to become less than serious oneself. I, you see, must lie, if I don’t want to take madmen seriously and become one of them myself.” ~ Milan Kundera, Laughable Loves
If we suspect that a man is lying, we should pretend to believe him; for then he becomes bold and assured, lies more vigorously, and is unmasked. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer
When the sky’s falling, I take shelter under bullshit. ~ Scott Lynch
Christians don’t tell lies. They just go to church and sing them. ~ A. W. Tozer
I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie. ~ Michel de Montaigne
Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true. ~ Yogi Berra
Heaven lies about us in our infancy and the world begins lying about us pretty soon afterward. ~ Ambrose Bierce
If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical maneuver. If a writer is silent, he is lying. ~ Jaroslav Seifert
Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale. ~ Gabriel García Márquez
There are only two people in your life you should lie to, the police and your girlfriend. ~ Jack Nicholson
If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it. ~ Epictetus
Man is not what he thinks he is. He is what he hides. ~ André Malraux
The thing that I think a lot of guys need to know how to do is not take your mother’s advice about honesty being the best policy. Listen to your cool, drunk uncle who tells you to lie. Those are the relationships that last. ~ Adam DeVine
Get your facts first. Then you can distort them as you please. ~ Mark Twain
Sometimes paranoia’s just having all the facts. ~ William S. Burroughs
There are no facts, only interpretations. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
The imaginations which people have of one another are the solid facts of society. ~ Charles Horton Cooley
The fewer the facts, the stronger the opinion. ~ Arnold H. Glasow
Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of facts. ~ George Santayana
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away. ~ Philip K. Dick
If someone tells you he is going to make a “realistic decision,” you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad. ~ Mary McCarthy
Optimism was for children. Once you reached adulthood then you had to join the rest of the world as a realist – life was a bag of shit you were expected to pay for. ~ N. C. Thomas
When people have given up on happiness they call themselves “realists.” ~ Marty Rubin
Cynical realism is the intelligent man’s best excuse for doing nothing in an intolerable situation. ~ Aldous Huxley
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is. ~ Winston Churchill
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. ~ Franklin P. Adams
Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers
Just Above Sunset 