Archive

Quotes

Alongside all swindlers the state now stands there as swindler-in-chief.

—Jacob Burckhardt, c. 1875

Your piping-hot lie is the best of lies.

—Plautus, c. 200 BC

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein, 1947

An honest man is all right even if he’s an idiot…but a crook must have brains.

—Maxim Gorky, 1902

There was no treachery too base for the world to commit.

—Virginia Woolf, 1927

Men were born to lie, and women to believe them.

—John Gay, 1728

If you find excrement somewhere in the village, the chief was the one who put it there.

—Congolese proverb

Cheating is more honorable than stealing. 

—German proverb

He that will cheat you at play, will cheat you any way.

—Thomas Fuller, 1732

If you steal, do not steal too much at a time. You may be arrested. Steal cleverly, little by little.

—Mobutu Sese Seko, 1991

Credulity forges more miracles than trickery could invent.

—Joseph Joubert, 1811

And, after all, what is a lie? ’Tis but the truth in masquerade.

—Lord Byron, 1822

Honesty, for me, is usually the worst policy imaginable.

—Patricia Highsmith, 1960