Robert G. Ingersoll Quotes

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

I'll tell you something that's completely true - you can, as a man, obtain everything you want with the truth. If you lie, first of all you've got to be a very good lying actor, which is tres difficile. And it's going to give you poison inside the body.

White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.

Lying can never save us from another lie.

I wish to Christ I could make up a really great lie. Sometimes, after an interview, I say to myself, 'Man, you were so honest - can't you have some fun? Can't you do some really down and dirty lying?' But the puritan in me thinks that if I tell a lie, I'll be punished.

No lie can live forever.

An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the same object. Men lie, because they think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is alike. If there were no gain to be got, your true-speaking man would tell untruths as much as your liar, and your liar would tell the truth as much as your true-speaking man.

I used to lie a lot as a child, which I now regret. I think it is much easier just to tell the truth.

Enough white lies can scorch the earth black.

Sometimes, a lie is told in kindness. I don't believe it ever works kindly. The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.

A lie cannot live.

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback.

It's a lie, but Heaven will forgive you for it.

Whoever is detected in a shameful fraud is ever after not believed even if they speak the truth.

I don't like being lied to, so I only lie about the stupid things. White lies, basically.

He who indulges in falsehood will find the paths of paradise shut to him.

When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.

It is my conviction that secrets are more costly in the long run than honesty.

Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.

By a lie, a man... annihilates his dignity as a man.

I suppose everyone tells little white lies. Quite often they're necessary to make someone feel better or prevent feelings from being hurt. Whoppers? No, that's dangerous and they'll boomerang.

People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.

I have never seasoned a truth with the sauce of a lie in order to digest it more easily.

Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.

'Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.