Patrick Leahy Quotes

Politicians learn to turn the truth into something that they want the truth to be.

if you think any American official is going to tell you the truth, then you’re stupid. Did you hear that? Stupid!

Charlatanism of some degree is indispensable to effective leadership. There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

Hypocrisy and rhetorical flimflam are standard in politics …

At no time did I suggest that violence is justice, and I can't believe I even have to explain that. But the alternative is letting someone like Kayleigh McEnany misquote and manipulate what you say. McEnany, who repeatedly lies to the American people.

Tell the lie over and over and over. It's an art that Trump understands well. There's no better evidence than his absolutely false claim that he opposed the Iraq War in 2002.

The only way to cover up a lie? Keep lying.

There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.

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

Donald Trump is a master salesman. And he creates his own reality. So if he tells you, "This is a middle-class tax cut, and I, Donald Trump, won't benefit," he expects you to believe that. It doesn't matter that it's not true. It's he said it, you're supposed to believe it. And that's how he's run his entire administration. If he says it, that makes it true.

A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it.

They've lied about everything.-about the fence, and the existence of Invalids, about a million other things besides. They told us the raids were carried out for our own protection. They told us the regulators were only interested in keeping the peace. They told us love was a disease. They told us it would kill us in the end. For the very first time I realize, that this, too, maight also be a lie.

If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.

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

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

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.

I think all politicians lie.

Journalists say a thing that they know isn't true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.

There are people who are very highly paid to cover the truth and who will protect their clients.

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

In politics, not all lies are all lies. And not all truths are complete.

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.

Politicians are masters of the art of deception.

A good portion of speaking will consist in knowing how to lie.