Bertolt Brecht Quotes

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.

Lord, Lord, how this world is given to lying!

Lies don't matter, ... There's no merit to it. It's kind of hard to entertain foolishness when it has no merit.

There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

'Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.

It's pretty damning. That's Hillary Clinton juxtaposed against the FBI Director Comey yesterday, clearly illustrating she lied.

The truth is perilous never to the true, Nor knowledge to the wise; and to the fool, And to the false, error and truth alike, Error is worse than ignorance.

The perjurer's mother told white lies.

Shew me a lyer, and I'le shew thee a theefe.

Lying contains the same hostile elements as a practical joke in that the 'victim' ends up looking foolish in his own eyes and laughable in everyone else's.

Husband a lie, and trump it up in some extraordinary emergency.

Show me a liar, and I'll show you a thief.

One has to be insincere and promise something which you cannot fulfill. So you either have to be a fool who does not understand what you are promising, or deliberately be lying.

He who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as he would tell a lie.

He lies like a book. And he reads a lot of books.

It is not the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and settleth in it, that doth the hurt.

If you get into crime you gotta know that everybody's a criminal and everybody's a liar, and everybody has the potential to backstab you, because it's not an honest profession. So don't go into crime and look for honesty.

One of the things cops learn first is that everyone lies. Some people to hide things, some people just for the hell of it, but everyone lies. Assume that everyone is hiding something, it saves time.

Titles are marks of honest men, and wise; The fool or knave that wears a title lies.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. 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.

Denying the undeniable just makes you sound like a fool as well as a liar.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

I never applied to any acting schools. I don't know if that's just bad reporting, or - sometimes I just make stuff up.

Men hate those to whom they have to lie.

A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity by man.