Famous Quotes & Sayings

John McCain

I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough, it will be believed.

John Irving

The lie, of course, is more interesting.

John Irving

What do Americans know about morality? They don't want their presidents to have penises but they don't mind if their presidents covertly arrange to support the Nicaraguan rebel forces after Congress has restricted such aid; they don't want their presidents to deceive their wives but they don't mind if their presidents deceive Congress- lie to the people and violate the people's constitution!

John Hoeven

The reality is that nearly 80 percent of the world's purchasing power lies outside the United States, and if we don't tap those markets, others will.

John Hodgman

Truth may be stranger than fiction, goes the old saw, but it is never as strange as lies.

John Harvey Kellogg

A dead cow or sheep lying in a pasture is recognized as carrion. The same sort of a carcass dressed and hung up in a butcher's stall passes as food.

Neal Shusterman

Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

Neal Shusterman

Cowards hide [...] but warriors lie and wait [...] the only difference is whether you're motivated by fear or purpose.

Neal Shusterman

So is darkness better than a heartfelt lie?

Ralph Nader

Nuclear power must be dealt with irrationally. . . . Nuclear plants are carcinogens. Let's get that story out. . . . Their lies will catch up to them. We need endless Chernobyl reminders.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I don’t want to stand before you like a thing, shrewd, secretive. I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will, as it goes toward action. And in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times, when something is coming near, I want to be with those who know secret things or else alone. I want to unfold. I don’t want to be folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I hold this to be the highest task of a bond between two people: that each shall stand guard over the solitude of the other. For, if it lies in the nature of indifference and of the crowd to recognize no solitude, then love and friendship are there for the purpose of continually providing the opportunity for solitude. And only those are the true sharings which rhythmically interrupt periods of deep isolation.

Rainer Maria Rilke

I want to unfold. I don’t want to stay folded anywhere, because where I am folded, there I am a lie.

It is a lie that to talk to Hispanics you have to talk about amnesty. Let me tell you, the only Hispanics that are in favor of amnesty are the illegals.

Shay Mitchell

You lie when you're a teenager, I think, because your parents are treating you like you're younger and you - in your mind - think that you're so much older. You make up all of these lies because you think it's what you should do.

Sheena Iyengar

The great artist Michelangelo claimed that his sculptures were already present in the stone, and all he had to do was carve away everything else. Our understanding of identity is often similar: Beneath the many layers of shoulds and shouldn’ts that cover us, there lies a constant, single, true self that is just waiting to be discovered.

Sharon Shinn

And you're not leaving," she said. "Promise me." It was as if she had asked him to promise to keep breathing, to notice sunshine, to permit the spinning of the earth. What choice did he have? Even if he left her, she would be camped in his heart, an insistent and willful presence. She would match her strides to his on any journey he ever took; she would lie beside him on any bed. Amalie, he said, "that's the easiest promise I've ever had to make.

Mick Jagger

Dandelions don't tell no lies...

Michael Peterson

Don't lie, then you can look the whole world in the eye.

Michael Pollan

But carbon 13 [the carbon from corn] doesn't lie, and researchers who have compared the isotopes in the flesh or hair of Americans to those in the same tissues of Mexicans report that it is now we in the North who are the true people of corn.... Compared to us, Mexicans today consume a far more varied carbon diet: the animals they eat still eat grass (until recently, Mexicans regarded feeding corn to livestock as a sacrilege); much of their protein comes from legumes; and they still sweeten their beverages with cane sugar. So that's us: processed corn, walking.

Michael Leunig

Sometimes I wonder if the semi-conscious agenda of the media is to get between people and their souls. It is the the soul with its myriad tiny nerve endings that notices the neglected pathos, poignancy and practicality that lies at the heart of life. It’s as if the media are somehow irritated and envious that anonymous people should have the quiet brilliance of their rich and sustainable inner lives...

Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit, for a greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of time.

Sholom Aleichem

Here lies a plain and simple Jew who wrote in plain and simple prose.

Sherman Alexie

In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is.

John Harington

A tailor, though a man of upright dealing,-- True but for lying,--honest but for stealing,-- Did fall one day extremely sick by chance And on the sudden was in wondrous trance.

John F. Kerry

These guys [Republicans] are the most crooked, you know, lying group I've ever seen.

John Dos Passos

Why, lies are like a sticky juice overspreading the world, a living, growing flypaper to catch and gum the wings of every human soul. . . And the little helpless buzzings of honest, liberal, kindly people, aren't they like the thin little noise flies make when they're caught?

John Donne

That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies.

John Donne

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be? O wilt thou therefore rise from me? Why should we rise, because 'tis light? Did we lie down, because 'twas night? Love which in spite of darkness brought us hither Should in despite of light keep us together.

John Donne

Here lies a she sun, and a he moon there; She gives the best light to his sphere; Or each is both, and all, and so They unto one another nothing owe; And yet they do, but are So just and rich in that coin which they pay, That neither would, nor needs forbear, nor stay; Neither desires to be spared nor to spare. They quickly pay their debt, and then Take no acquittances, but pay again; They pay, they give, they lend, and so let fall No such occasion to be liberal. More truth, more courage in these two do shine, Than all thy turtles have and sparrows, Valentine.

John Donne

To an incompetent judge I must not lie, but I may be silent; to a competent I must answer.

And he that will this health deny, Down among the dead men let him lie.

John Eldredge

We are made in the image of God; we carry within us the desire for our true life of intimacy and adventure. To say we want less than that is to lie.