Mendacity Quotes

• Since I no longer expect anything from mankind except madness, meanness, and mendacity; egotism, cowardice, and self-delusion, I have stopped being a misanthrope.

  Irving Layton

  Self, Madness, Misanthrope

  Irving Layton (1969). “The whole bloody bird: obs, aphs & pomes”

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• Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

  Tennessee Williams

  Way, Bricks, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

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• Dealing with a government with whom mendacity is a science is an extremely difficult matter.

  John Hay

  Government, Matter, Difficult

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• The liar is no whit better than the thief, and if his mendacity takes the form of slander he may be worse than most thieves. It puts a premium upon knavery untruthfully to attack an honest man, or even with hysterical exaggeration to assail a bad man with untruth.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Liars, Men, May

  The Man with the Muck-rake, delivered 14 April 1906

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• Among all the world's races, some obscure Bedouin tribes possibly apart, Americans are the most prone to misinformation. This is not the consequence of any special preference for mendacity, although at the higher levels of their public administration that tendency is impressive. It is rather that so much of what they themselves believe is wrong.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Believe, Race, Special

  "The United States". The New York magazine article on November 15, 1971, reprinted in "A View from the Stands", 1986.

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• Psychiatric expert testimony: mendacity masquerading as medicine.

  Thomas Szasz

  Medicine, Experts, Testimony

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (2004). “Words to the Wise: A Medical-Philosophical Dictionary”, p.162, Transaction Publishers

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• One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

  Bertrand Russell

  Truth, Evil, Growth

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.360, Psychology Press

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• The poor must be wisely visited and liberally cared for, so that mendicity shall not be tempted into mendacity, nor want exasperated into crime.

  Robert Charles Winthrop

  Caring, Temptation, Want

  Robert Charles Winthrop (1886). “Addresses and Speeches on Various Occasions: 1878-1886”

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• For most people, honesty is such an unusual departure from their standard modus operandi - such an abherration in their workaday mendacity - that they feel obliged to alert you when a moment of sincerity is coming on.

  Zoë Heller

  Honesty, People, Departure

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• We love old travelers: we love to hear them prate, drivel and lie; we love them for their asinine vanity, their ability to bore, their luxuriant fertility of imagination, their startling, brilliant, overwhelming mendacity.

  Mark Twain

  Travel, Lying, Vanity

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• Deception, machination and mendacity lie at the core of human intelligence, like worms coiled at the core of a apple

  Mark Rowlands

  Lying, Apples, Deception

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• Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity.

  Hans F. Sennholz

  Honesty, Libertarian, States

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• One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity.

  Bertrand Russell

  Obstacles, Instruction, Form

  Bertrand Russell, Richard A. Rempel, Beryl Haslam (2000). “Uncertain Paths to Freedom: Russia and China, 1919-22”, p.360, Psychology Press

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• If it doesn’t have ambiguity, don’t bother to take it. I love that, that aspect of photography - the mendacity of photography. It’s got to have some kind of peculiarity in it, or it’s not interesting to me.

  Sally Mann

  Photography, Interesting, Photographer

  "Dog Bone Prints: Sally Mann". Art in the Twenty-First Century Interview, art21.org. September 2001.

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• Age cannot limit him, nor use exhaust his infinite mendacity.

  Joseph Furphy

  Age, Use, Limits

  Joseph Furphy (2001). “The Buln-Buln and the Brolga”

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• Those of us forced to read the London papers sometimes speculate about which is greater: the average British hack's sloth, mendacity, ignorance, obsequiousness, capacity for drink, or aversion to paying for that drink. Smart money tends to split between the latter two.

  Larry King

  Smart, Ignorance, Average

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• Washington's Corruption and Mendacity Is What Makes America 'Exceptional'

  Paul Craig Roberts

  America, Corruption, Exceptional

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• I do not plan in any way to whitewash my sin. I do not call it a mistake, a mendacity; I call it sin. I would much rather, if possible - and in my estimation it would not be possible - to make it worse than less than it actually is. I have no one but myself to blame. I do not lay the fault or the blame of the charge at anyone else's feet. For no one is to blame but I take the responsibility. I take the blame. I take the fault.

  Jimmy Swaggart

  Mistake, Responsibility, Apology

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The scandalous bronze-lacquer age of hungry animalisms, spiritual impotences, and mendacities, will have to run its course, till the pit follow it.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Running, Spiritual, Age

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• Man, in spite of his tendency towards mendacity, has a great respect for what he calls the truth. Truth is his staff in his voyage through life; commonplaces are the bread in his bag and the wine in his jug.

  Remy de Gourmont

  Wine, Men, Jugs

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• My child, you have a flawed grasp of the nature of myth-making. I am a poet and storyteller, a creator of ballads and sagas. Pray do not confuse the exercise of the imagination with mere mendacity. I am a master of the mysteries of words, their meanings and music and mellifluous magic.

  Frances Hardinge

  Children, Exercise, Imagination

  Frances Hardinge (2011). “Fly By Night”, p.21, Pan Macmillan

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• Social and political life is a Society for the Diffusion of Mendacity .

  Samuel Laman Blanchard

  Political, Life Is, Social

  "Sketches from Life". Book by Samuel Laman Blanchard, Volumes 1-2, 1846.

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• WEATHER, n. The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up of official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Weather, Government, Rude

  Ambrose Bierce (2016). “The Devil's Dictionary: The Devil World”, p.232, 谷月社

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• Outrageous fiscal mendacity is neither historically normal nor bipartisan. It’s a modern Republican thing.

  Paul Krugman

  Normal, Republican, Modern

  "Trillion Dollar Fraudsters". www.nytimes.com. March 20, 2015.

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• I do not scruple to employ mendacity and a fictitious appearance of female incompetence when the occasion demands it.

  Barbara Mertz

  Female, Demand, Appearance

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