Voltaire Quotes

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

There are things to confess that enrich the world, and things that need not be said.

I've learned I'm not lying by not saying anything, so I just don't say it anymore.

Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.

Ask no questions, and you'll be told no lies.

Ask no questions and you'll hear no lies.

It is important to our friends to believe that we are unreservedly frank with them, and important to friendship that we are not.

While all deception requires secrecy, all secrecy is not meant to deceive.

I think I would have been a hopeless spy. I love telling stories and am almost entirely unable to keep a secret.

I'm a pretty bad liar, and I'm not very good at keeping secrets.

You have to steer a course between not appalling people, but at the same time not misleading them.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

I always mean what I say, but I don't always say what I'm thinking.

Discretion is not the better part of biography.

Not knowing the answer is better than consciously misleading.

All truths are not to be told.

If there is one thing that our role models in this election have taught us, it's that omitting important information is completely different from lying.

Abraham Lincoln is the most shut-mouthed man who ever lived. He always tells only enough of his plans and purpose to induce the belief that he had communicated all.

There are no secrets.

Tell the truth once and for all and shut up forever.

Dishonesty is not the only alternative to honesty. There is also the highly underrated virtue of shutting up.

A man who tells nothing, or who tells all, will equally have nothing told him.

It requires as much to tell the truth as to conceal it.