History Quotes / ConsummateLiar

->''"Every word she writes in a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'"''

->''Golden words he will pour in your ear\\
But his lies can't disguise what you fear''

->''Tell me Light, from the moment you were born, has there actually been a point in your life where you've actually told the truth?''

->''Those who are foolish enough to believe that they might come to understand the motivations and plans of this most deceptive god must surely be deluded, for [[GodOfEvil Tzeentch]] is the Father of Lies and Deception, the Master of Fortune and the Architect of Fate. Truth and lies spill from His consciousness like the incoming tide of a treacherous sea. [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Tzeentch cannot be trusted even to the degree that the other gods of Chaos can be]] -- a sobering realization indeed, considering the fickle nature of His brother daemon-gods.''

->''The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but [[ManipulativeBastard to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin]]. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singular ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here. The Daemon's mind was a labyrinth of deceptions. Truth was trammelled at the heard of that maze and far beyond my meagre reach.''

->''When you speak, everything is the truth. Your words never quaver, your vital signs remain normal, your facts seem consistent, and your eyes betray no deception whatsoever. No matter how outrageous your story might be, an objective observer will assume that at least ''you'' believe it's true.''

->''Hayasaka lied as naturally as she breathed.''

->''[[MeanBoss Nick]] gave a [[DeadAllAlong ghostly]] sigh at these inaccuracies and, though they were distortions, so was his irritation at them. I'll go into these invariably drawn-out sagas of misinformation as we come to them, but the thing to keep in mind is that Nick had a strange way with the truth. I don't just mean that he was a good liar, I mean that [[ManipulativeBastard he had the ability to distort the truth in the same way that a black hole has the ability to distort time and space]]. It wasn't something he did, it was something he ''was.'' When you were in his presence, the truth had a way of not looking the way it was supposed to look.''

->''Barron's at Princeton, [[AmoralAttorney studying pre-law]], which is pretty funny because he is a compulsive liar. He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it. I don't think he'll last half a minute in court before he'll make up something outrageous about his client.''

->''The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.''

->''An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.''

->''I caught Truman out in a dozen or so lies that everyone else preferred to believe. I can't think what labor of Hercules I thought I had undertaken, and certainly [[KarmaHoudini to no useful end]], because the instant lie was Truman's art form, small but, paradoxically, authentic. One could watch the process. A famous name would be registered. The round pale fetus face would suddenly register a sort of tic, as if a switch had been thrown. 'UsefulNotes/EleanorRoosevelt. Oh, I know her ''intimately!''"''

->''There is a serene quality in a great {{hypocrite}} that I greatly admire. I don't think it's possible to be a frenzied hypocrite. That wouldn't do at all. There's nearly always a sublime self-assurance to a good hypocrite, don't you think? Hypocrites are not prone to self-doubt. I always imagine that great hypocrites have no interior life at all; what you see is what they are. All good actors have a touch of the hypocrite. I think I was born to be a hypocrite, all exterior and hollow, but wanting to amuse. Hypocrites can be very generous, too, so long as [[PhotoOpWithTheDog the world is watching]].''

->''[[BlahBlahBlah Something something something]] [[WoundedGazelleGambit horrifically unfair government case against him]] and just like that, he becomes tech's "[[VillainWithGoodPublicity hacktivist hero]]."''

-->-- '''Mimir''' describing '''[[VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok Odin]]''', ''VideoGame/GodOfWarRagnarok''

-->-- '''Shirley Bassey''', from the theme to ''Film/{{Goldfinger}}''

->''In thy foul throat [[ThatLiarLies thou liest]].''
-->--'''Lady Anne''', ''Theatre/RichardIII''

->''[[AC: Have I lied to you? I mean [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative in this room?]]]]''
-->--'''[=GLaDOS=]''', ''{{VideoGame/Portal}}''

->''{{I lied}}. That's what I do.''
-->--'''Benjamin Linus''', ''Series/{{Lost}}''

->'''Deepthroat:''' I'm the liar. You're the killer.\\
'''Cigarette Smoking Man:''' Your lies have [[EvenEvilHasStandards killed more in a day than I have in a lifetime.]]
-->--''Series/TheXFiles'', "Musings of a Cigarette-Smoking Man"

->''Sicilians are great liars; the ''best'' in the world. I'm Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him, I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away. A guy's got seventeen pantomimes. (A woman's got twenty, a guy's got seventeen, but...) If you know them, like you know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell.''
-->--'''Vincenzo Cocotti''', ''Film/TrueRomance''

->''When dealing with a pathological liar, don't go looking for signs of a guilty conscience. True deceivers ''enjoy'' the lie. They know to look you dead in the eye and usually [[CrocodileTears shed a few tears on demand]]. So if you want to know when they're lying, look for [[CheshireCatGrin the little smile]] when deceiving a room full of people.''
-->--'''Michael Westen''', ''Series/BurnNotice'' ("Partners in Crime")

'''Polygraph Interrogator:''' [troubled] True.
-->--''Film/TheRecruit''

'''Jonathan:''' I lie to everybody, what makes you so special?\\
'''Evelyn:''' I'm your ''sister''!\\

-->--''Film/TheMummy1999''

->''I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.''

'''Azula:''' Are you sure? I'm a pretty good liar. [[BlatantLies I am a four-hundred-foot tall purple platypus bear with pink horns and silver wings.]]\\
'''({{Beat}})'''\\

-->-- ''WesternAnimation/AvatarTheLastAirbender'' -- ''The Day of Black Sun'' Part 2: "The Eclipse"

->''One lie after another. You make it look easy.''
-->-- '''[[{{Shinigami}} Ryuk]]''' (to Light), ''Manga/DeathNote''

-->--'''L''' to Light Yagami, ''Manga/DeathNote''

-> ''Truth, Doctor, is in the eye of the beholder. I never tell the truth because I don't believe there is such a thing. That's why I prefer the straight-line simplicity of cutting cloth.''
-->--'''Elim Garak''', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E05Cardassians Cardassians]]"

-> '''Dr. Julian Bashir''': Out of all the stories you told me, which ones were true and which ones weren't?\\
'''Elim Garak''': My dear Doctor, they're ''all'' true.\\
'''Dr. Julian Bashir''': Even the lies?\\
'''Elim Garak''': ''[[EspeciallyZoidberg Especially]]'' the lies.

-> ''The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination.''
-->--'''Elim Garak''' ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS03E20ImprobableCause Improbable Cause]]"

->''(Julian has just told Garak the tale of [[CryingWolf "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"]])''\\
'''Dr. Julian Bashir''': But the point is, if you lie all the time, nobody's going to believe you, even when you're telling the truth.\\
'''Elim Garak''': Are you sure that's the point, doctor?\\
'''Dr. Julian Bashir''': Of course, what else could it be?\\
'''Elim Garak''': That you should never tell the same lie twice...

-> '''Psycho Mantis:''' But it's all ''about'' the little details! I mean, you must spend every day pretending to act like you're falsely letting on that you [[ConfusingMultipleNegatives aren't not unbetraying]] someone you don't not purport to allegedly work for but really ''do''! How do you keep all this shit straight without having an ''aneurysm''?\\
'''Revolver Ocelot:''' *shrugs* Practice.

->Those who are foolish enough to believe that they might come to understand the motivations and plans of this most deceptive god must surely be deluded, for [[GodOfEvil Tzeentch]] is the Father of Lies and Deception, the Master of Fortune and the Architect of Fate. Truth and lies spill from His consciousness like the incoming tide of a treacherous sea. [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Tzeentch cannot be trusted even to the degree that the other gods of Chaos can be]] - a sobering realization indeed, considering the fickle nature of His brother daemon-gods.
-->--''[[TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}} Liber Chaotica]]''

->''In my time, I have stayed ahead of [[NaziHunter Wiesenthal]] and pulled the wool over the eyes of [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Himmler himself]]. If I cannot fool one American public school teacher, I will pull my winding shroud around me and crawl down into my grave.''
-->--'''[[NaziGrandpa Kurt Dussander]],''' ''[[Literature/DifferentSeasons Apt Pupil]]''

->When you speak, everything is the truth. Your words never quaver, your vital signs remain normal, your facts seem consistent, and your eyes betray no deception whatsoever. No matter how outrageous your story might be, an objective observer will assume that at least ''you'' believe it's true.
-->--The '''Perfect Liar''' merit, ''TabletopGame/MageTheAscension - Guide To The Technocracy''

->'''Thor:''' You're a talented liar, brother, always have been.\\

-->--''Film/{{Thor}}''

->Hayasaka lied as naturally as she breathed.

->[[MeanBoss Nick]] gave a [[DeadAllAlong ghostly]] sigh at these inaccuracies and, though they were distortions, so was his irritation at them. I'll go into these invariably drawn-out sagas of misinformation as we come to them, but the thing to keep in mind is that Nick had a strange way with the truth. I don't just mean that he was a good liar, I mean that [[ManipulativeBastard he had the ability to distort the truth in the same way that a black hole has the ability to distort time and space]]. It wasn't something he did, it was something he ''was.'' When you were in his presence, the truth had a way of not looking the way it was supposed to look.
-->-- ''The Golden Age Of Censorship,'' by Paul Hoffman

->The Daemon lied with every breath. It could not help itself but [[ManipulativeBastard to deceive and dismay, to riddle and ruin]]. The more we conversed, the closer I drew to one singular ineluctable fact: I would gain no wisdom here. The Daemon's mind was a labyrinth of deceptions. Truth was trammelled at the heard of that maze and far beyond my meagre reach.
-->--The '''Liber Malefic,''' ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}: Daemons of Chaos Army Book (8th edition)''

->''She's an actress that would put movie stars to shame.''

->'''Dayna:''' But Servalan told us he was dead.\\

'''Dayna:''' Well, she had no reason to lie.\\

-->-- ''Series/BlakesSeven'', "Blake"

->Barron's at Princeton, [[AmoralAttorney studying pre-law]], which is pretty funny because he is a compulsive liar. He's the kind of liar who totally forgets what he told you the last time, but he believes every single lie with such conviction that sometimes he can convince you of it. I don't think he'll last half a minute in court before he'll make up something outrageous about his client.
-->--''[[Literature/TheCurseWorkers White Cat]]''

->A liar is always lavish of oaths.

->A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes.

->The liar's punishment is, not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

->An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.
-->-- '''Aldous Huxley''', ''Brave New World Revisited''

->You will never learn what I am thinking. And those who boast most loudly that they know my thought, to such people I lie even more.
-->--'''UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler''' to Franz Halder

->I caught Truman out in a dozen or so lies that everyone else preferred to believe. I can't think what labor of Hercules I thought I had undertaken, and certainly [[KarmaHoudini to no useful end]], because the instant lie was Truman's art form, small but, paradoxically, authentic. One could watch the process. A famous name would be registered. The round pale fetus face would suddenly register a sort of tic, as if a switch had been thrown. 'UsefulNotes/EleanorRoosevelt. Oh, I know her ''intimately!''"
-->-- '''Creator/GoreVidal''' on Truman Capote, ''Palimpsest''

->Every word she writes in a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'
-->-- '''Mary [=McCarthy=]''' on, err... '[[{{Archenemy}} colleague]]' Creator/LillianHellman, ''The Dick Cavett Show''

->The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it.

->There is a serene quality in a great hypocrite that I greatly admire. I don't think it's possible to be a frenzied hypocrite. That wouldn't do at all. There's nearly always a sublime self-assurance to a good hypocrite, don't you think? Hypocrites are not prone to self-doubt. I always imagine that great hypocrites have no interior life at all; what you see is what they are. All good actors have a touch of the hypocrite. I think I was born to be a hypocrite, all exterior and hollow, but wanting to amuse. Hypocrites can be very generous, too, so long as [[PhotoOpWithTheDog the world is watching]].
-->-- '''Creator/TomBaker''', ''Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?''

->'[[BlahBlahBlah Something something something]] [[WoundedGazelleGambit horrifically unfair government case against him]] and just like that, he becomes tech’s '[[VillainWithGoodPublicity hacktivist hero.]]'
-->-- '''[[http://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/ Kathy Sierra]]''' on hacktivist/neo-Nazi Andrew "weev" Auernheimer

->"Instead of moving to London and becoming a Nazi spy, Pujol moved to Portugal and flexed his mad B.S.ing skillz to the max. From his home office in Lisbon, armed only with a Spanish-language version of Frommer's Guide to England, a British railway schedule, and a couple road maps, he somehow [[DoubleAgent convinced the Nazis that he had established himself as a secret agent working deep undercover in the British Isles]]. As if magically teleporting himself across the Channel to a country he'd never seen before wasn't enough of a feat, he then [[InventedIndividual fabricated an entire organized network of badass fictional spies]] to come work for him and do awesome things in his name. Before long, this crazy imaginary spymaster built a network of twenty-seven (!!) fake men and women ranging from a Swiss banker who was horrified by Liverpool orgies to a Venezuelan dock worker trading wine bottles for information in Glasgow, and they were all feeding him intel about places he'd never actually been before, which he then relayed to the Germans. I probably don't need to mention that the Nazis [[YouHaveFailedMe weren't exactly known for taking it easy on guys who royally cocked them over]], but Pujol apparently didn't even give a shit that he was playing with radioactive fire here – [[RefugeInAudacity he was so balls-out that he mailed the letters from his local post office, passing it off as though he had a KLM pilot under his power that was flying the letters across the Channel and dropping them in a Portuguese mailbox]]. Incredibly, they bought it."
-->-- ''Website/BadassOfTheWeek'' on Juan Pujol García

-->--'''Elim Garak'', ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'', "[[Recap/StarTrekDeepSpaceNineS02E05Cardassians Cardassians]]"

-->-- '''Holden Caufield''', ''Literature/The CatcherInTheRye''

->In thy foul throat [[ThatLiarLies thou liest]].

->[[AC: Have I lied to you? I mean [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative in this room?]]]]

->{{I lied}}. That's what I do.

->Sicilians are great liars; the ''best'' in the world. I'm Sicilian. My father was the world heavy-weight champion of Sicilian liars. From growing up with him, I learned the pantomime. There are seventeen different things a guy can do when he lies to give himself away. A guy's got seventeen pantomimes. (A woman's got twenty, a guy's got seventeen, but...) If you know them, like you know your own face, they beat lie detectors all to hell.

->When dealing with a pathological liar, don't go looking for signs of a guilty conscience. True deceivers ''enjoy'' the lie. They know to look you dead in the eye and usually [[CrocodileTears shed a few tears on demand]]. So if you want to know when they're lying, look for [[CheshireCatGrin the little smile]] when deceiving a room full of people.

->I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
-->-- '''Holden Caufield''', ''Literature/{{The Catcher in the Rye}}''

->One lie after another. You make it look easy.

->Tell me Light, from the moment you were born, has there actually been a point in your life where you've actually told the truth?

-> The truth is usually just an excuse for a lack of imagination.

->In my time, I have stayed ahead of [[NaziHunter Wiesenthal]] and pulled the wool over the eyes of [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany Himmler himself]]. If I cannot fool one American public school teacher, I will pull my winding shroud around me and crawl down into my grave.

-->-- '''Cinder''' describing her [[EvilMatriarch mother]], '''[[AbusiveParents Brigit]] [[TheSociopath Stark]]''', ''Fanfic/MyNameIsCinder''

->I caught Truman out in a dozen or so lies that everyone else preferred to believe. I can't think what labor of Hercules I thought I had undertaken, and certainly [[KarmaHoudini to no useful end]], because the instant lie was Truman's art form, small but, paradoxically, authentic. One could watch the process. A famous name would be registered. The round pale fetus face would suddenly register a sort of tic, as if a switch had been thrown. 'UsefulNotes/EleanorRoosevelt. Oh, I know her ''intimately!''

->'''Toph:''' And stick to the truth. I'll be able to [[LivingLieDetector tell if you're lying]].\\
'''Azula:''' Are you sure? I'm a pretty good liar. I am a four-hundred-foot tall purple [[MixAndMatchCritters platypus bear]] with pink horns and silver wings.\\

[[folder:fiction]]

->In thy foul throat [[ThatLiarLies thou liest.]]

-->--''The Golden Age Of Censorship,'' by Paul Hoffman

->'''Dayna:''' But Servalan told us he was dead.
->'''Avon:''' And you believed her?
->'''Dayna:''' Well, she had no reason to lie.
->'''Avon:''' She doesn't need one. It comes quite naturally to her, like breathing.

[[folder:real life]]

-->--'''Pierre Corneille'''

-->--'''Creator/MarkTwain'''

-->--'''Creator/GeorgeBernardShaw''', ''The Quintessence of Ibsenism''

-->--'''Aldous Huxley''', ''Brave New World Revisited''

-->--'''Creator/GoreVidal''' on Truman Capote, ''Palimpsest''

-->--'''Mary [=McCarthy=]''' on, err... '[[{{Archenemy}} colleague]]' Creator/LillianHellman, ''The Dick Cavett Show''

-->--'''Alberto Brandolini''', programmer

-->--'''Creator/TomBaker''', ''Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?''

-->--'''[[http://www.wired.com/2014/10/trolls-will-always-win/ Kathy Sierra]]''' on hacktivist/neo-Nazi Andrew "weev" Auernheimer

->[[AC: Have I lied to you? I mean [[OverlynarrowSuperlative in this room?]]]]

->[[MeanBoss Nick]] gave a [[DeadAllAlong ghostly]] sigh at these inaccuracies and, though they were distortions, so was his irritation at them. I'll go into these invariably drawn-out sagas of misinformation as we come to them, but the thing to keep in mind is that Nick had a strange way with the truth. I don't just mean that he was a good liar, I mean that [[ManiipulativeBastard he had the ability to distort the truth in the same way that a black hole has the ability to distort time and space]]. It wasn't something he did, it was something he ''was.'' When you were in his presence, the truth had a way of not looking the way it was supposed to look.