Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes

Saying what you believe others want to hear is, of course, a form of lying.

The days and weeks of screwed-up smiles and laboured courtesy, the mock geniality, the hearty shake of the filthy hand, the chuckling reply that must be made to the coarse joke, the loathsome, choking compliment that must be paid to the grimy wife and sluttish daughter, the indispensable flattery of the vilest religious prejudices, the wholesale deglutition of hypocritical pledges.

Deception, flattering, lying, deluding, talking behind the back, putting up a false front, living in borrowed splendor, wearing a mask, hiding behind convention, playing a role for others and for oneself -- in short, a continuous fluttering around the solitary flame of vanity -- is so much the rule and the law among men that there is almost nothing which is less comprehensible than how an honest and pure drive for truth could have arisen among them.

Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears

Is not cant the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, abominations, body themselves, from which no true thing can come? For cant is itself the properly a double-distilled lie, the second power of a lie.

A lot of times in politics you have people look you in the eye and tell you what's not on their mind.

What have I eaten? Lies and smiles.

And, of all lies (be that one poet's boast) / The lie that flatters I abhor the most.

One of my weaknesses happens to be lying, and I could tell you that I'm never going to lie again in my life, but that would be a lie.

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.

Ambition drove many men to become false; to have one thought locked in the breast, another ready on the tongue.

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.

The music industry is a world of smoke and mirrors: they tell you exactly what they think you want to hear. And they are bare-faced lying. I tend to stay away from that.

There's an old saying amongst players in football talking about your general manger and coaches, they speak with a forked tongue.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!

Put away from you a dissembling mouth.

Hypocrisy is the vaseline of political intercourse.

Let us not foist this humbug on the world.

I don't know what else to do other than tell people what I think to be untruths.

Don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

I always felt like, when you're lying, you're kind of pretending to be something you're not.

If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.

There is none who does not lie hourly in the respect he pays to false appearance.

I don't lie," I lied.