“Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”

“To make a deliberate falsification for personal gain is the last, worst depth to which either scholar or artist can descend in work or life.(Letter to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, 8 September 1935)”

“Pick a leader who will not only bail out banks and airlines, but also families from losing their homes — or jobs due to their companies moving to other countries. Pick a leader who will fund schools, not limit spending on education and allow libraries to close. Pick a leader who chooses diplomacy over war. An honest broker in foreign relations. A leader with integrity, one who says what they mean, keeps their word and does not lie to their people. Pick a leader who is strong and confident, yet humble. Intelligent, but not sly. A leader who encourages diversity, not racism. One who understands the needs of the farmer, the teacher, the doctor, and the environmentalist — not only the banker, the oil tycoon, the weapons developer, or the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbyist.”

“Use truth to fight the lies. Use the heart to fight the mind.”

“Truth has to be credible or it makes as much trouble as any lie!”

“Truth is a naked and open daylight, that does not show the masques, and mummeries, and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. . . A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure”

“But keeping secrets is a discipline. I never use to think of myself as a good liar, but after having had some practice I had adopted the prevaricator’s credo that one doesn’t so much fabricate a lie as marry it. A successful lie cannot be brought into this world and capriciously abandoned; like any committed relationship it must be maintained, and with far more devotion than the truth, which carries on being carelessly true without any help. By contrast, my lie needed me as much as I needed it, and so demanded the constancy of wedlock: Till death do us part.”

“A bitter reality of truth can be wisely told in a sweet tale of lullaby.”

“The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.”

“For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth”

“People only lie because they are afraid of the truth”

“Truth is a risky proposition. It’s the nature of mediocre human beings to believe that lies are necessary, that they serve a purpose, that truth is subversive, that candor is dangerous, that the very scaffold of communal life is supported by lies.”

“One swallows the lie that flatters, but sips the bitter truth drop by drop.”

“It’s exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.”