Journalists used to be raffish and amusing liars, and they are no longer raffish or amusing.
Lying
To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-faced Lie!
Not a private hansom Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.
—-Kipling
Never confess at the show trial. They shoot you anyway, then kill your wife and children.
A truth is sometimes told in public, but almost always by accident.
“Be honest”: An injunction to lie.
A little truth, hard-won, can last a man for life. It is lies and nonsense for which a tolerance soon becomes a taste, a taste an appetite, and an appetite at last an insatiable craving.
To learn the status of an identity, count how many people fake it.
It isn’t true.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true.
No one should talk about it.
Why are you talking about it?
The more obvious the truth, the more severely its utterance is punished.
For those who flatter us we have many nasty names, but never liar.
The idea that smoke implies fire cannot survive a professional class of industrious smoke merchants.