William Peter Blatty Quotes

Most closed heavens for the Christian are between his ears. Believing a lie empowers the liar.

A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.

My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil's best trick is to persuade you that he doesn't exist!

Being a practiced liar doesn't mean you have a powerful imagination. Many good liars have no imagination at all; it's that which gives their lies such wide-eyed conviction.

Let's not be naive, we're not talking about a simple political battle; it is a destructive pretension against the plan of God. We are not talking about a mere bill, but rather a machination of the Father of Lies that seeks to confuse and deceive the children of God.

Every decent con man knows that the simplest truth is more powerful than even the most elaborate lie.

I try to lie as much as I can when I'm interviewed. It's reverse psychology. I figure if you lie, they'll print the truth.

A half-truth is the most cowardly of lies.

Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.

Lies are a little fortress; inside them you can feel safe & powerful.

The power of propaganda is to say something enough times that it becomes the Big Lie.

He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it.

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.

A good liar must have a good memory. Kissinger is a stupendous liar with a remarkable memory.

It is the human wish to be told lies that keep us as primitive morally and socially as we are. I am persuaded that a lie grounded in human desire is too powerful for mere reason to kill.

We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

Truth is no man's slave - but lies - what magnificent servants they make.

The closer to the truth, the better the lie, and the truth itself, when it can be used, is the best lie.

When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.

The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.

You're such a big liar you gotta get your neighbor to call your dog.

Note to self: Rachel Morgan is a totally awesome liar.

When treating with liars, even an honest man must lie.

We are being very nomadic with the truth, yes?