Philip Pullman Quotes

Everywhere we are surrounded by dogs and sorcerers and whores and the Godless and all who love lies and commit them.

When winning is everything and everyone does whatever they need to win and to not lose, including lying, you have a world in which 'basic trust' is lost.

When you're surrounded by a world of constant lies, manipulation, and deceit, that dark energy is bound to seep into you eventually.

We are never so easily deceived as when we imagine we are deceiving others.

The prevarication and white lies which a mind that keeps itself ambitiously pure is as uneasy under as a great artist under the false touches that no eye detects but his own, are worn as lightly as mere trimmings when once the actions have become a lie.

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.

It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.

I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.

I am talking about ultimate deceit. I am talking about unparalleled treachery. Bottomless lies. Depths that are seen that are previously unimaginable. Darkness and shattering despair that could break bones. Paranoia and horror that could stop the heart cold. All inflicted on one's self by one's self. The soul turns schizophrenic and goes hopelessly insane.

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

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

Hell lies at the bottom of the human heart.

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 know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.

Lies suck; they tear you apart from the inside out.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

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.

One to mislead the public, another to mislead the Cabinet, and the third to mislead itself.

When you're on the side of the angels, it's easier to stretch the truth.

Sitting in marble corridors waiting for important people to lie to you.

It seems that in the world of politics, lying is not such a big deal.

[Theodore Roosevelt] has sold himself to the devil and will live up to the bargain.

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesize and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.