Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of 'living a lie'. I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable.

Arafat contradicts himself every five minutes. He always plays the double-cross, lies even if you ask him what time it is.

Like many people, I have a fascination with lies and the people who tell them. I wouldn't say I've never told a lie, but I don't think I've ever told one without both assuming I would be found out and feeling absolutely rotten about it.

Americans detest all lies except lies spoken in public or printed lies.

The first thing a man will do for his ideals is lie.

She tells a lot of lies, this daughter of mine ... She talks a lot about democracy, but she's become a little dictator.

What’s the difference between my fabricating reports and your letting your agents do it? At least mine make sense.

Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

You become uneasy with people in direct proportion to how many lies you have to keep track of in their presence.

We are missing the truth. We live in a society that lies and fosters and sells dishonesty at a discount. Remember the line, 'America spells cheese K-R-A-F-T? That does not spell cheese! We tell our kids that as long as it looks good on the outside, don't worry about the inside. Or work hard and you'll be rewarded in the end. That's not necessarily true anymore. We don't tell the truth about certain things. Young people see our hypocrisy. We haven't given them a model to follow.

The politer the society, the greater the lies it requires.

Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.

The chance that any given sentence is a lie, rather than a truth, I think, is fairly great. An intentional lie, a self-deception, a misconception - there are lots of categories of untruth, not one grab bag. And hotographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.

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.

It was one of the most disgusting spectacles I've ever seen-- this white-haired old man, who should have been thinking of the hereafter, standing there lying like an actor.

The worst thing about being lied to, is realizing they don't think you're worth the truth.

What have I eaten? Lies and smiles.

I think you can be an honest person and lie about any number of things.

Every race, every art has its hypocrisy. The world is fed with a little truth and many lies.

It is easy for men to talk one thing and think another.

And when all was said and done the lies a fellow told about himself couldn't probably hold a proverbial candle to the wholesale whoppers other fellows coined about him.

With other people, Hilly hands out lies like the Presbyterians hand out guilt, but it's our own silent agreement, this strict honesty, perhaps the one thing that has kept us friends

Lying about things large and small has become so accepted by so many that they even lie about lying.

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

We tend to tell strangers what we think will make us sound good. I myself, to my utter amazement, informed a telephone pollster that I exercised regularly, a bare-faced lie.