Jim Butcher Quotes

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.

A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.

Make the law and then find a way around it.

An excuse is worse and more terrible than a lie, for an excuse is a lie guarded.

That's a good question. Let me try to evade you.

Pretexts are not wanting when one wishes to use them.

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

You don't tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

Lying is the most simple form of self-defence.

When lying, be emphatic and indignant, thus behaving like your children.

It's not just politicians. Any spokesman for a vested interest is well schooled in how to say what it is they wish to say, which may bear no relation at all to what you've asked them.

Using vague, slippery or just meaningless language is not the same as lying: it's not intended to deceive so much as to preserve options, buy time, distance oneself from others, or just to sound like you're saying something instead of nothing.

Frank and explicit – that is the right line to take when you want to conceal your own mind and to confuse the minds of others.

An ideology is a complex of ideas or notions which represents itself to the thinker as an absolute truth for the interpretation of the world and his situation within it; it leads the thinker to accomplish an act of self-deception for the purpose of justification, obfuscation and evasion in some sense or other

I hope you have not seriously taken amiss my certainly quite cowardly statements…. I wanted to remain free and could not do so without great duplicity.

If that comes up, I'll just confuse them.

Trump is a master obfuscator. Like an octopus escaping a predator, he releases a cloud of ink when called to the carpet on one of his many lies. His strategy? Obfuscate, then reference others. 'Millions agree,' 'everyone knows,' 'many have done it.'

I try to keep everything under wraps. Everything I can do to make sure people don't know what they're getting themselves into, I will do it.

When a pointed question is beaten back with an attack or threat of, 'How dare you...' it's a reliable signal that deception is involved. Trump is a master at this.

Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But let this happen in such a way that no one become aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand to be produced immediately.

Language can be used to so many diverse ends. It can be used to clarify and, of course, it can be used to obfuscate, confuse, evade.

Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confound, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish and are generally perfectly capable of contriving to give one an utterly unambiguous impression of their future course of action while in fact intending to do exactly the opposite, but they never lie. Perish the thought.

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it

Do not be alarmed by simplification, complexity is often a device for claiming sophistication, or for evading simple truths.

Principal Principal: Where's your late pass, mister? Errant Student: I'm on my way to get one now. PP: But you can't be in the hall without a pass. ES: I know, I'm so upset. That's why I need to hurry, so I can get a pass. Principal Principal pauses with a look on his face like Daffy Duck's when Bugs is pulling a fast one. PP: Well, hurry up, then, and get that pass.