Falsehood

A man who hides behind the hypocrite is smaller than the hypocrite.
~ William Edward Biederwolf

The Man who pretends to be a modest enquirer into the truth of a self evident thing is a Knave.
~ William Blake, Annotations to Watson (1798).

So cheat your landlord if you can and must, but do not try to shortchange the Muse. It cannot be done. You can't fake quality any more than you can fake a good meal.
~ William S. Burroughs, The Western Lands (1987).

The worst of what people did to each other were the deceptions, because when you love some one you control their version of reality, and if you lie to them, that's like making them autistic so that what they think is the truth is not their true situation at all.
~ William Carpenter, A Keeper of Sheep (1994).

Thou liar of the first magnitude.
~ William Congreve, Love for Love (1695). Act 2, scene 5

[C]eremony leads her bigots forth,
Prepared to fight for shadows of no worth;
While truths, on which eternal things depend,
Find not, or hardly find, a single friend.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). Expostulation

[I] lie like the truth.
~ Willem Dafoe

I'm a little like Holden Caulfield -- the things I hate more than anything else are hypocrisy and pretension. They make my skin crawl. And I would put arrogance in the same category. To perceive myself as arrogant would hurt.
~ David William Duchovny, Playboy Interview: David Duchovny (December 1998).

Our presence here is all vain glory,
This false world is but transitory.
~ William Dunbar, Lament for the Makars (1507).

When lying, be emphatic and indignant, thus behaving like your children.
~ William Feather

None of this I'm-too-good-for-it sort of thing. That's not my dish.
~ (William) Clark Gable, in Photoplay Magazine (Interview; April 1941). Gable on the Spot: Things I don't like myself

No one ever lies. People often do what they have to do to make to make their story sound right.
~ William Ginsberg

Be thorough in all you do; and remember that although ignorance often may be innocent, pretension is always despicable.
~ William Ewart Gladstone, Lord Rector Address, Glasgow University, Scotland (5 December 1879).

The most apparent perversion of the press is the distortion of news to favor a particular class or clique of politicians.
~ William Brooke (W.B.) Graves, from Readings in Public Opinion: Its Formation and Control (1928). Chapter IX: The Press And Public Opinion

Compare Scripture with Scripture. False doctrines, like false witnesses, agree not among themselves.
~ William Gurnall

The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on the verge of truth.
~ Augustus William Hare

They are the only honest hypocrites.
~ William Hazlitt, from The Round Table (1817). On Actors and Acting

We all wear some disguise, make some professions, use some artifice, to set ourselves off as being better than we are; and yet it is not denied that we have some good intentions and praiseworthy qualities at bottom.
~ William Hazlitt, from Sketches and Essays (1839). On Cant and Hypocrisy

Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?
~ William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways: A Journey into America (1982).

Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability. Facts are what people can agree on. Truth can be determined by each reader.
~ William A. Henry, III, in Time magazine (2 July 1984). Embroidering the Facts

Style is a fraud. I always felt the Greeks were hiding behind their columns.
~ Willem de Kooning, Lecture at the 'Subjects of the Artist' School, New York (18 February 1949). A Desperate View

It's better to be an authentic loser than a false success, and to die alive than to live dead.
~ William Markiewicz, Extracts of Existence (1990).

From the earliest times the old have rubbed it into the young that they are wiser than they, and before the young had discovered what nonsense this was they were old too, and it profited them to carry on the imposture.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale (1930).

He lied and never knew that he lied, and when it was pointed out to him said that lies were beautiful. He was an idealist.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage (1915). Chapter 29

Hypocrisy is the most difficult and nerve-racking vice that any man can pursue; it needs an unceasing vigilance and a rare detachment of spirit. It cannot, like adultery or gluttony, be practised at spare moments; it is a whole-time job.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, Cakes and Ale (1930).

Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence (1919).

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
~ William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch (1983).

How strangely simplified and falsified does man live! One does not cease to wonder, once one has eyes to see this wonder!
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1885-86).

No one is such a liar as the indignant man.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1885-86).

That getting along without false judgments would amount to getting along without life, negating life. To admit untruth as a necessary condition of life: this implies, to be sure, a perilous resistance against customary value-feelings.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (1885-86).

The lie is a condition of life.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The visionary lies to himself, the liar only to others.
~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human. First Sequel: Mixed Opinions and Maxims (March 1879).

Commentary and opinion is not spin. What spin is, is taking a set of circumstances, all right, and taking that circumstance and making it not what it is.
~ Bill O'Reilly, FoxNews Channel, The O'Reilly Factor (29 November 2001). Personal Story: Bill Press

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), The Gentle Grafter (1908). The Octopus Marooned

My point is simply that I think you should be honest and admit that we all spin. And you spin as much as I do. . . .
~ Bill Press, The O'Reilly Factor (29 November 2001). Personal Story: Bill Press

An evil soul, producing holy witness,
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice. Act I, scene iii

False as dicers' oaths.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene iv

False face must hide what the false heart doth know.
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth. Act I, scene vii

Falsehood is worse in kings than beggars.
~ William Shakespeare, Cymbeline

Falstaff sweats to death
And lards the lean earth as he walks along.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part I

Framed to make women false.
~ William Shakespeare, Othello

Here's ado to lock up honesty
And honor from th' access of gentle visitors.
~ William Shakespeare, The Winter's Tale. Act II, scene ii

I am falser than vows made in wine.
~ William Shakespeare, As You Like It. Act III, scene v

I am well acquainted with your manner of wrenching the true cause the false way.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part II

In a false quarrel there is no true valour.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

It is as easy as lying.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene ii

O, pardon me, my lord! it oft falls out,
To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.
I something do excuse the thing I hate.
~ William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure. Act II, scene iv

O world, world! thus is the poor agent despised.
O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited!
Why should our endeavor be so loved, and the performance so loathed?
~ William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, Act V, scene x

So may the outward shows be least themselves:
The world is still deceived with ornament.
~ William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

Teach me, dear creature, how to think and speak;
Lay open to my earthy-gross conceit,
Smother'd in errors, feeble, shallow, weak,
The folded meaning of your words' deceit.
~ William Shakespeare, The Comedy of Errors

Was ever book containing such vile matter
So fairly bound? O, that deceit should dwell
In such a gorgeous palace!
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

What! frighted with false fire?
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act III, scene ii

You undergo too strict a paradox,
Striving to make an ugly deed look fair:
Your words have took such pains as if they labour'd
To bring manslaughter into form and set quarrelling.
~ William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
~ William Shenstone

Statistics is the art of lying by means of figures.
~ Wilhelm Stekhel, Marriage at the Crossroads (1931).

Hypocrites in the Church? Yes, and in the lodge and at the home. Don't hunt through the Church for a hypocrite. Go home and look in the mirror. Hypocrites? Yes. See that you make the number one less.
~ William A. "Billy" Sunday

A snob is that man or woman who is always pretending to be something better, especially richer or more fashionable, that other people are.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray

And if pretension for a time deceive,
And prove me one too ready to believe,
Far less my shame, than if by stubborn act,
I brand as lie, some great colossal Fact.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, New Thought Pastels (1906). Credulity

They seem to have a license to lie.
~ George F. Will

The polygraph is not a lie detector. Don't make the mistake of thinking that just because you are telling the truth you will pass the polygraph test! Polygraph tests have branded many truthful people as liars!
~ Douglas Gene Williams, How To Sting The Polygraph

De only way tuh keep a lie from gittin' foun' out is tuh stop tellin' it.
~ Egbert Austin "Bert" Williams

'Why can't we use the regular rain?' you asked,
as rain hammered on the roof.
'That's God's rain', said someone.
'It doesn't show up on film.
We need Billy's rain for this one'.
~ Hugo Williams, Billy's Rain (1999). Billy's Rain

Peace is the first casualty of untruthfulness.
~ Dr. Rowan Williams, (1991 Sermon).

Everyone says he's sincere, but everyone isn't sincere. If everyone was sincere who says he's sincere there wouldn't be half so many insincere ones in the world and there would be lots, lots, lots more really sincere ones!
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Camino Real (1953).

Hell, you got to live with it, there's nothing else to live with except mendacity, is there?
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955).

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite!
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, The Rose Tattoo (1951).

Thou treacherous, base deserter of my flame,
False to my passion, fatal to my fame,
Through what mistaken magic dost thou prove
So true to lewdness, so untrue to love?.
~ John Wilmot, Earl Of Rochester, The Imperfect Enjoyment

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
~ Joseph C. Wilson 4th, Op-Ed Contributor, in The New York Times (6 July 2003). What I Didn't Find in Africa

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride;
They have spoken against you everywhere,
But weigh this song with the great and their pride;
I made it out of a mouthful of air,
Their children's children shall say they have lied.
~ William Butler Yeats, from The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). He Thinks of Those Who Have Spoken Evil of His Beloved