George Bancroft Quotes

Cunning leads to knavery. It is but a step from one to the other, and that very slippery. Only lying makes the difference; add that to cunning, and it is knavery.

People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception.

O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

Deceit is the game of petty spirits, and that is by nature a woman's quality.

People lie, and they always are very very creative in finding new ways to lie.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

It's good that I managed to hoodwink so many people. I am actually not that nice a person.

Secrecy is the badge of fraud.

If Edith Wharton lived in the Age of Innocence, surely we now live in the Age of Deception.

Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult and delicate matter.

I wouldn't know how to fool a man any more. My deceiving days seem so long ago.

You will be amused when you see that I have more than once deceived without the slightest qualm of conscience, both knaves and fools.

Lying does exist in crazy forms.

Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.

I was a good liar as a child.

The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.

Not only do I lie, I take real pleasure in lying, in the transmission of magic effects.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.

I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life.

The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.

It is a double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

In my lifetime I have never seen such a volume of deceiving and dissembling.