Clarence Darrow 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.

In the Middle Eastern culture, it is looked upon with very high regard to get the best deal possible, no matter what it takes, and that includes lying.

In friendships, you expect total trust; in business you expect some dishonesty. But in politics, you not only expect distortion as a way of life but accept it with pleasure.

These cowards have no morals. They have no shame about lying.

There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them . . . and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

So I wasn't lying, exactly. I was just choosing among truths.

It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth.

A very honest woman but something given to lie

Deception by an omission of the truth is as bad as a lie.

In the 'bullshit department' a businessman can't hold a candle to a clergyman.

Lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.

Deception is one of the quickest ways to gain little things and lose big things.

A liar must have a good memory. -Mendacem oportet esse memorem

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.

Lies exist only to be extinguished.

Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had an agreement not to lie to each other.

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.

Your truths are worse than your lies.

I don't lie." "You don't lie," I repeated. "That's what I said." "Ever." "Nope." Sure you don't, I thought.

Lying is the strongest acknowledgement of the force of truth.

The same principle that forbids me to lie does not allow me to tell the truth.