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Dishonest people can do a lot of damage.
While most of us have told some white lies in the course of our lives, things take a drastic turn for the worse when you’re dealing with outright liars. Lies can destroy the trust you might have once had in a person, or they can make your life much more difficult.
We’ve assembled this list of 127 liar quotes to help you deal with the people in your life who play fast and loose with their honesty.
Before we get on to the quotes, let's delve a little bit into liars and dishonesty.
Why Read Liar Quotes
Why do people lie? A person will only do things because they believe it benefits them in some way, therefore a liar is someone who has repeatedly benefitted from their dishonesty.
You might be wondering how you’re going to deal with liars if their dishonesty has helped them in some way? Most things in life work the following way, something that benefits you quickly in the short term will often have long-term costs, but something that requires sacrifice in the short term will often benefit you in the long term.
Lies are absolutely the same way, dishonesty might buy a liar a few quick advantages, but in the long term, they are greatly harming themselves. A liar will often cause their own destruction, so you deal with liars by being prepared for them. You don’t outwit a liar, instead, you simply bring the full force of the truth at them.
How will the liar quotes help you here? As in many things, the solution to dishonest people isn’t scheming revenge, it’s to build your compassion, uplift your wisdom, and enhance your awareness.
This list of quotes is designed to do just that, as dealing with liars may be one of the oldest issues humans have faced. We have a plethora of wisdom to reflect on, and these words can truly help you navigate the currents that dishonest people can produce.
Now let’s bring out the quotes.
127 Liar Quotes to Deal with Dishonest People
- “Nothing is more deceitful…than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.” – Jane Austen
- “No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar” – Abraham Lincoln
- “A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.” – Aesop
- All liars … lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth. – Aminatta Forna
- “The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.” – David Foster Wallace, author
- “Trying to make sense of crazy will simply drive you crazy. Let it go.” – Karen Salmansohn
- “When your ears hear one thing, but your eyes see another…use your brain.” – Frank Sonnenberg
- “I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Men are liars. We'll lie about lying if we have to. I'm an algebra liar. I figure two good lies make a positive.” – Tim Allen
- “After all, it was the nature of twentieth-century capitalism that everyone should scam everyone, and he who scammed the most ultimately won the game. On that basis, I was the undefeated world champ.” – Jordan Belfort
- “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Mean people don’t bother me. Mean people who disguise themselves as nice people bother me a lot.” – Cindy Cummings Johnson
- “Stop falling for those who won’t raise you up in the future.” -Michael Bassey Johnson
- “The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.” – Stephen King
- “I've studied pathological liars, and anything they say, they believe, and that's one of the reasons they're so convincing, because they have no connection with the truth. It's a dead issue. It's like they're color-blind to the truth. So anything that comes out of their mouths is their reality.” – Jane Velez-Mitchell
- “If we are true to ourselves, we can not be false to anyone.” – William Shakespeare
- “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson, former U.S. president
- “Sociopaths have lifelong patterns of deceitfulness for personal gain. They lack remorse and empathy and are wizards at rationalizing away how they hurt and mistreat others.” – Gary Small
- “Lies are like cockroaches, for every one you discover there are many more that are hidden.” – Gary Hopkins
- “Hate a liar more than I hate thief. A thief is only after my salary a liar is after my reality.” – Curtis Jackson
- “Someone said there’s no such thing as an honest man. He was probably a con man.” – Frank W. Abagnale
- “To reach that end goal you and I must be willing to be straightforward with one another. We must be willing and prepared to stare at ourselves in the mirror and speak the truth.” – Mark Devro
- “I don’t degrade anyone, but a liar and a person, who doesn’t keep his or her words, has not any value in my eyes.” – Ehsan Sehgal
- “If you're really successful at bullshitting, it means you're not hanging around enough people smarter than you.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
- “It’s better to be sworn to an honest fool than to a lying scholar.” – Christopher Paolini
- “Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away.” – Ismail Haniyeh
- “When people don’t tell you the truth what they really are saying is they don’t value you or their relationship with you enough, to be honest.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “The most confused we ever get is when we're trying to convince our heads of something our heart knows is a lie.” – Karen Marie Moning
- “By open words, A scheme of villainy is soon bewrayed.” – Sophocles
- “We learned about honesty and integrity—that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.” -Michelle Obama
- “Pigs are dirty, but I will tell you something dirtier: Liars! Untruth always smells like rotten garbage!” – Mehmet Murat ildan
- “One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
- “In a scene where nobody with any ambition is really what he appears to be, there’s not much risk in acting like a king-hell freak.” – Hunter S. Thompson
- “If you want to have a healthy mind, you must feed your mind with truth.” – Rick Warren
- “Lies sound like facts to those who’ve been conditioned to misrecognize the truth.” – DaShanne Stokes
- “Once you place that crown of liar on your head, you can take it off again, but it leaves a stain for all time.” – Terry Goodkind
- “You can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.” – Donald Trump
- “The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” – Lao Tzu
- “The ability to lie, paired with unaccountability, has made a near infinite amount of liabilities.” – Justin K. McFarlane
- “The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” – Thomas Sowell
The fact that so many successful politicians are such shameless liars is not only a reflection on them, it is also a reflection on us. When the people want the impossible, only liars can satisfy.” – Thomas Sowell
- “False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” – William Shakespeare
- “The fact that a great many people believe something is no guarantee of its truth.” – W. Somerset Maugham
- “Be careful… not all are what they seem. Some people pretend to be the beach, but they’re actually quicksand.” – Steve Maraboli
- “Corrupt men are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies, or rather to half-believe them.” – Robert Payne
- “Anything’s better than lying and deceit.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery.” – Anne Holm
- “Truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” – Nadine Gordimer
- “Truth is as straight as an arrow, while a lie swivels like a snake.” – Suzy Kassem
- “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” – Adolf Hitler
- “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.” – Plato
- “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.” – Martin Luther King
- “Some people are in such utter darkness that they will burn you just to see a light. Try not to take it personally.” – Kamand Kojouri
- “Liars often set their own traps.” – Aesop
- “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.” – Albert Einstein
- “What I know for sure is that speaking your truth is the most powerful tool we have.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “In politics, you learn how to say A mean to say B, in wisdom you learn how to say A and keep saying that.” – Auliq Ice
- “A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
- “All that one gains by falsehood is, not to be believed when he speaks the truth.” – Aristotle
- “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.” – Walt Whitman
- “There is tremendous trauma in the betrayal caused by a perpetual liar as they repeatedly commit psychological abuse.” – Cathy Burnham Martin
- “We all have defining moments. It is in these moments that we find our true characters. We become heroes or cowards; truth tellers or liars; we go forward or we go backward.” – Robert Kiyosaki
- “The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.” – Abu Bakr
- “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” – Buddha
- “Take back your power! I wish you the wisdom to realize that the problem isn’t that they keep lying to you; it’s that you keep believing them.” – Steve Maraboli
- “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Time will inevitably uncover dishonesty and lies; history has no place for them.” – Norodom Sihanouk
- “A lie is like a snowball; it starts off small and then grows and grows until a point where it gets so big it falls apart and then the truth is discovered.” – Chris Hughes
- “People don’t lie to contaminate truth. They lie to pollute their hearts.” – Munia Khan
- “You can best reward a liar by believing nothing of what he says.” – Aristippus
- “Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.” – Christian Nestell Bovee
- “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “Once a country is habituated to liars, it takes generations to get the truth back.” – Gore Vidal
- “Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.” – Confucius
- “To know the good from the bad, study a man or woman’s history of actions, not their record of intentions.” – Suzy Kassem
- “Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth.” – Gautama Buddha
- “People always overdo the matter when they attempt deception.” – Charles Dudley Warner
- “A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.” – Thomas Mann
- “It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.” – Noël Coward
- “A coward talks to everyone but YOU.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.” – Arthur Conan Doyle
- “Anything is better than lies and deceit!” – Leo Tolstoy
Anything is better than lies and deceit!” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you look up “charming” in the dictionary, you'll see that it not only has references to strong attraction, but to spells and magic. Then again, what are liars if not great magicians?” – Deb Caletti
- “Just because something isn't a lie does not mean that it isn't deceptive. A liar knows that he is a liar, but one who speaks mere portions of truth in order to deceive is a craftsman of destruction.” – Criss Jami
- “If a man lies to you, he is behaving badly and unlovingly toward you. He is disrespecting you and your relationship.” – Susan Forward
- “Half of the people lie with their lips; the other half with their tears” – Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- “Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides.” – André Malraux
- “When one with honeyed words but evil mind Persuades the mob, great woes befall the state.” – Euripides
- “The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.” – Brandon Sanderson
- “Oh, what a tangled web we weave…when first we practice to deceive.” – Walter Scott
- “Do not be deceived: bad company corrupts good morals.” – Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version
- “When God takes out the trash, don't go digging back through it. Trust Him.” – Amaka Imani Nkosazana
- “A lie that is half-truth is the darkest of all lies.” – Alfred Tennyson
- “You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it.” – Libba Bray
- “Lies don't end relationships the truth does.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Youth is easily deceived because it is quick to hope.” – Aristotle
- “Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.” – Ashly Lorenzana
- “Facts are threatening to those invested in fraud.” – DaShanne Stokes
- “The biggest liar in the world is They Say.” – Douglas Malloch
- “Do actions agree with words? There's your measure of reliability. Never confine yourself to the words.” – Frank Herbert
- “A liar is always lavish of oaths.” – Pierre Corneille
- “When you don’t have honesty in love then there is no communication. Honesty is improvisation of the heart; anything less is a well thought out and rehearsed script.” – Shannon L. Alder
- “People trust their eyes above all else – but most people see what they wish to see, or what they believe they should see; not what is really there” – Zoë Marriott
- “Your eyes can deceive you, don’t trust them.” – Obi-Wan Kenobi
- “People wear a mask of lies so they look attractive, so be careful.” – Muhammad Saqib
- “One may outwit another, but not all the others.” – François de La Rochefoucauld
- “In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.” – Robert McKee
- “Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.” – Dale Carnegie
- “People are secretive when they have secrets.” – Deb Caletti
- “Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.” – Patti Callahan Henry
- “Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” – Bertrand Russell
- “We don’t believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.” – Scott Lynch
- “Whatever others may say, they say it to deceive and comfort themselves, not help you.” – Dejan Stojanovic
Whatever others may say, they say it to deceive and comfort themselves, not help you.” – Dejan Stojanovic
- “Lying is done with words, and also with silence.” – Adrienne Rich
- “I do know that the slickest way to lie is to tell the right amount of truth–then shut up.” – Robert A. Heinlein
- “Many things are not as they seem: The worst things in life never are.” – Jim Butcher
- “I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day.” – Jody Gehrman
- “And not only the pride of intellect but the stupidity of intellect. And, above all, the dishonesty, yes, the dishonesty of intellect. Yes, indeed, the dishonesty and trickery of intellect.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “If you wear a mask for too long, there will come a time when you can not remove it without removing your face.” – Matshona Dhliwayo
- “Deceit for personal gain is one of history's most recurring crimes.” – Criss Jami
- “It is only prudent never to place complete confidence in that by which we have even once been deceived.” – René Descartes
- “The value of words lies in their reliability.” – Lao Tzu
- “Honesty whispers, “Don't get pricked by the thorns of lie.” – Angelica Hopes
- “The truest way to be deceived is to think oneself more knowing than others.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “Mirrors are perpetually deceitful. They lie and steal your true self. They reveal only what your mind believes it sees.” – Dee Remy
- “Nobody will ever take you serious in life, until they know that your yes is yes and your no is no.” – Bamigboye Olurotimi
- “If lies could save the World, the Heavens and all the Saints would bow down to politicians.” – Joan Ambu
Final Thoughts on Liar Quotes
That’s the end of our liar quotes! We hope you enjoyed reading through these.
Some of the most dangerous people in history have used dishonesty and deception as the basis to go on to do terrible things. While the stakes may not be that high in your personal life, equipping yourself to deal with dishonest people is one of the greatest ways to empower yourself.
These quotes can help you a great deal on this journey of empowerment. Also, check out these 109 growth mindset affirmations and statements for 2022, to help you get closer to the truth and further from the dishonest.
And if you want more eye-opening quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 101 Toxic People Quotes to Stay Away from Negativity
- 91 Ungrateful Quotes for Dealing with Thankless People
- 73 Haters Quotes for Dealing with Negative People
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
Tom Smith is a creative writer with over 6 years of professional experience. He discovered the joy of writing after covering some furniture in his childhood home with graffiti. In later years, he got himself a BA in creative writing and hasn’t looked back. After discovering the power of positive thinking and discovering the spiritual side of life, he believes it's a huge privilege to be able to write about all things personal development.
