It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

—H. L. Mencken

truth belief lying

About H. L. Mencken

Portrait of H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also earned him...

More quotations from H. L. Mencken

The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.

—H. L. Mencken in Minority Report

humanity power greed idealism

Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.

—H. L. Mencken

conscience voice looking observation

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

—H. L. Mencken

belief mankind passion

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

—H. L. Mencken

fear happiness puritanism

Platitude: an idea (a) that is admitted to be true by everyone, and (b) that is not true.

—H. L. Mencken

truth ideas language culture

More quotations tagged with “lying”

Of course I lie to people. But I lie altruistically—for our mutual good. The lie is the basic building block of good manners. That may seem mildly shocking to a moralist—but then what isn't?

—Quentin Crisp

truth shock manners lying

When a child first catches adults out—when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just—his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

—John Steinbeck

justice wisdom learning intelligence safety gods childhood growth lying parental infallibility

Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.

—Homer Simpson

The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go the longest way.

—Samuel Butler

We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know because they have never deceived us.

—Samuel Johnson

knowledge belief lies lying intimacy

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
14 Jul 2015 Edited (details weren’t recorded yet)