John Dos Passos Quotes

Lies were only as strong as the suckers that believed them.

The people who lie the most are nearly always the clumsiest at it, and they're easier to fool with lies than most people, too. You'd think they'd be on the look-out for lies, but they seem to be the very ones that will believe almost anything at all.

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

It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.

You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.

You can fool people some of the time, but you can't fool them all of the time.

There is to some men a great Lechery in Lying, and imposing on the understandings of beleeving people.

A peculiar side of credulity is that it is often joined with a proneness to imposture. The association of believing and lying is not characteristic solely of children. They inability or unwillingness to see things as they are promotes both gullibility and charlatanism.

Lies require commitment.

It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.

A lie always needs a truth for a handle to it. The worst lies are those whose blade is false, but whose handle is true.

It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.

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

Those who listen to lies lose the ability to hear the truth.

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

A lie took two parties - the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.

The credulity of dupes is as inexhaustible as the invention of knaves.

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

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 always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.

To me, horror is when I see somebody lying. I mean a person I know. A friend. And he's telling me something that I accept. And then suddenly, as he or she is telling it, there's something that gives them away. They're not telling me the truth.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don't trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

Some women can be fooled all of the time, and all women can be fooled some of the time, but the same woman can't be fooled by the same man in the same way more than half of the time.