Theodore Dalrymple Quotes

Maintaining silence about a dirty truth is another way of lying, a common practice in high places.

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

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.

In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.

The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him, he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism.

Lying is a terrible vice, it testifies that one despises God, but fears men.

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

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

Irony is the recourse of the weak-minded wimp, I think. I hate bands that deliver their songs with knowing smiles on their faces, so that if those songs fall flat they can say 'Ah well, we never really meant it anyway.' It's so dishonest.

I was one of the most brilliant liars as a child.

In Hollywood people lie to each other and cheat each other and then go and play tennis. But I don't want to be a tennis player.

A man of such obvious and exemplary charm must be a liar.

A hypocrite despises those whom he deceives, but has no respect for himself. He would make a dupe of himself too, if he could.

In politics, yesterday's lie is attacked only to flatter today's.

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

I know how easy it is for one to stay well within moral, ethical, and legal bounds through the skillful use of words - and to thereby spin, sidestep, circumvent, or bend a truth completely out of shape. To that extent, we are all liars on numerous occasions.

Dishonesty is so grasping it would deceive God himself, were it possible.

Nowadays those are rewarded who make right appear wrong.

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

An ounce of hypocrisy is worth a pound of ambition.

There's a lot of lying and these are people who are incredibly flawed, and not in very sort of empathetic ways, either. Some of the things they do are pretty awful and some of the things they do to each other are pretty awful.

Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favor.

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

Whenever there are great virtues, it's a sure sign something's wrong.

Behavior which appears superficially correct but is intrinsically corrupt always irritates those who see below the surface.