I should distinguish wise men from fools.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

A thief is a man in need. A liar is a man in fear.

And then she understood the devilish cunning of the enemies’ plan. By mixing a little truth with it they had made their lie far stronger.

Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can't be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

When whole races and peoples conspire to propagate gigantic mute lies in the interest of tyrannies and shams, why should we care anything about the trifling lies told by individuals?

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth.

Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If all people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.

All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

It's the truth I'm after, and the truth never harmed anyone. What harms us is to persist in self-deceit and ignorance.

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.

Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live accordingly to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.