Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

For me, the facts in anything are always secondary. You don't lie convincingly with the truth. You lie convincingly with being a good liar.

Whoever attacks the popular falsehoods of his time will find that a lie defends itself by telling other lies. Nothing is so prolific, nothing can so multiply itself, nothing can lay and hatch as many eggs, as a good, healthy, lie.

Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them.

It is a principle of diplomacy that one must know something of the truth in order to lie convincingly.

You take the lies out of him, and he'll shrink to the size of your hat; you take the malice out of him, and he'll disappear.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.

A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.

the best lie is wrapped around a core of truth

Within every elaborate lie, a kernel of truth.

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.

You know what lies are for.

Something therefore always remains and sticks from the most imprudent of lies, a fact which all bodies and individuals concerned in the art of lying in this world know only too well, and therefore they stop at nothing to achieve this end.

You have to learn to read between the lies.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. 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 good liar must have a good memory.

There always comes a point beyond which lying becomes counterproductive. This point is reached when the audience to which the lies are addressed is forced to disregard altogether the distinguishing line between truth and falsehood in order to be able to survive.

Do you feel better?” I asked Sam as he opened the door to the Volkswagen for me. “Yes,” he said. He was still a terrible liar. “Good,” I said. I was still a fantastic one.

The little bit of truth contained in many a lie is what makes them so terrible.

I certainly don't believe you documentary filmmakers. Like me, you are involved in making fiction, and your fiction is just as well organized and just as well predicated, but the big difference between me and you is that I'm honest and you're dishonest. I know I'm telling you lies.

Men lie the most, women tell the biggest lies.

A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship, it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help.

A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.

For this is the most civil sort of lie That can be given to a man's face. I now Say what I think.

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.