It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Anybody with ability can play in the big leagues. But to be able to trick people year in and year out the way I did, I think that was a much greater feat.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I should know how it’s done so I would recognise when I was being lied to.

Propaganda is amazing. People can be led to believe anything.

To Sun-tzu and the ancient Chinese, doing something extraordinary had little effect without a setup of something ordinary. You had to mix the two – to fix your opponent’s expectations with some banal, ordinary maneuver, a comfortable pattern that they would then expect you to follow.

When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never revealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense.

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

If you’re lying, you’re lying.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

The Ronaldo who came to Manchester United had a lot of dribbling, trickery, playing more on the wings and making more assists.

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

Propaganda is to a democracy what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state.

Quacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Bondage is the life of personality, and for bondage the personal self will fight with tireless resourcefulness and the most stubborn cunning.

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

Governments are supposed to lie to their citizens.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies… if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

I was mischievous. I wasn’t bad. I stole food so we could eat. My mother didn’t know. I used to tell her some man gave me $10 to sweep out the yard. I was like Robin Hood. I took from the rich and gave to the poor. Me.

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

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

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

I’m pretty calculating. I take stuff that I know appeals to people’s bad sides and match it up with stuff that appeals to their good sides.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

I was a little worried that young people would think the only game was being political and manipulative when really the bigger game is being so good at what you do that nobody can argue with your results.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

It is only hope which is real, and reality is a bitterness and a deceit.

The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid, because freedom is on the march.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite!

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

The Joker that Christopher Nolan created in ‚The Dark Knight‘ had the scar across his mouth, and the first time you heard his explanation for it, he makes you believe that’s how he got it. But then you get into the film, and every time he talks about his scar, it’s a totally different story.

Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

The lie is a condition of life.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.

One who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.