Quotes about deception

The great advantages of simulation and dissimulation are three. First to lay asleep opposition and to surprise. For where a man's intentions are published, it is an alarum to call up all that are against them. The second is to reserve a man's self a fair retreat: for if a man engage himself, by a manifest declaration, he must go through, or take a fall. The third is, the better to discover the mind of another. For to him that opens himself, men will hardly show themselves adverse; but will fair let him go on, and turn their freedom of speech to freedom of thought.

— Francis Bacon

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.

— Pierre Charron

Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.

— Oliver Cromwell

Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.

— Desiderius Erasmus

Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.

— Benjamin Franklin

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

— Benjamin Franklin

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I became a virtuoso of deceit. It wasn't pleasure I was after, it was knowledge. I consulted the strictest moralists to learn how to appear, philosophers to find out what to think and novelists to see what I could get away with. And, in the end, I distilled everything down to one wonderfully simple principle: win or die.

— Christopher Hampton

Life is the art of being well deceived.

— William Hazlitt

Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.

— William Hazlitt

The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself.

— Hitopadesa

Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another.

— Homer

He who has made it a practice to lie and deceive his father, will be the most daring in deceiving others.

— Horace

To give up pretensions is as blessed a relief as to get them ratified.

— William James

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man's virtues the means of deceiving him.

— Samuel Johnson

It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

— Jean De La Fontaine

The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.

— Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.

— Johann Kaspar Lavater

You can fool some of the people all the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.

— Abraham Lincoln

We like to be deceived.

— Blaise Pascal

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

— Plato

Every cloud has a silver lining.

— Proverb

To know how to disguise is the knowledge of kings.

— Cardinal De Richelieu

It seems to me that there are two kinds of trickery: the fronts people assume before one another's eyes, and the front a writer puts on the face of reality.

— Francoise Sagan

Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.

— Johann G. Seume

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

— William Shakespeare

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

— Socrates

All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.

— Robert Southey

The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.

— John Tillotson

The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.

— John Tillotson

A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.

— Marina Tsvetaeva

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

— Mark Twain

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

— Mark Twain

Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.

— Marquis De Vauvenargues

The art of pleasing is the art of deception.

— Marquis De Vauvenargues

They deceive themself and thus us; merchants and tycoons of the world. Evil has gone from bad to worse for a worthless reward.

— James Dye