C. S. Lewis Quotes

Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why then should we desire to be deceived?

I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

I'm not lying to myself like most people.

People are always afraid of the truth.

We don’t like to face unpleasant reality. We want our leaders to tell us what we want to hear …. You cannot manipulate reality. Reality will real its ugly head

Lyra learns to her great cost that fantasy isn’t enough. She has been lying all her life, telling stories to people, making up fantasies, and suddenly she comes to a point where that’s not enough. All she can do is tell the truth. She tells the truth about her childhood, about the experiences she had in Oxford, and that is what saves her. True experience, not fantasy - reality, not lies - is what saves us in the end.

... if a man really and truly believed that black was white, you might advise him to see an oculist, but you mustn't call him a liar.

People say the truth hurts. Hell no, it hurts even more if you do a whole bunch of foolishness to try and avoid it.

If you search for truthfulness, you might as well be blind.

Of course a picture can lie, but only if you are not honest with yourself.

Truth is too simple for us: we do not like those who unmask our illusions.

Truth may sometimes hurt, but delusion harms.

Telling lies is a bit like tiling bathrooms - if you don't know how to do it properly, it's best not to try.

the problem with knowing is that it takes away the possibility of pretending!

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

We are all afraid of the truth.

It is best, if possible, to deceive no one; for he that ... begins by deceiving others, will end ... by deceiving himself.

The realist lies for advantage. The fantasist lies to give his dreams a flavor of reality.

Dignity is often a veil between us and the real truth of things.

But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.

Say it, do it, preach it, shout it, but never, absolutely never, believe your own bullshit.