George R. R. Martin Quotes

It is as easy to deceive one's self without perceiving it, as it is difficult to deceive others without their finding out.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

I am not sincere, even when I say I am not.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

It takes a wise man to handle a lie, a fool had better remain honest.

Anybody can make something up and have it sound believable. The hard part is remembering all the lies you've told, and all the people you've told them to, and then living the lies that have become your life.

If you have the ability to convince somebody of something that you don't necessarily think is the case, it's a valuable asset. Not that I'm, like, a pathological liar, but we spend most of the day not fully being honest, you know?

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak.

The worst of all deceptions is self-deception.

I don't lie," I lied.

A big lie is more plausible than truth.

We lie best when we lie to ourselves.

The best lies about me are the ones I told.

Man is ice to truth and fire to falsehood.

The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

You know what lies are for.

The less time you spend with Truth, the easier it is to believe lies.

He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.

Nearly everyone will lie to you, given the right circumstances.

It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.

Lies require commitment.