The Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don’t be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

Power is the measure of the degree of control you have over circumstances in your life and the actions of the people around you. It is a skill that is developed by a deep understanding of human nature, of what truly motivates people, and of the manipulations necessary for advancement and protection.

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

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

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

When governments rely increasingly on sophisticated public relations agencies, public debate disappears and is replaced by competing propaganda campaigns, with all the accompanying deceits. Advertising isn’t about truth or fairness or rationality, but about mobilising deeper and more primitive layers of the human mind.

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.

The female loves to play man against man. And if she is in a position to do it, there is not one who will resist.

My father was a mean, controlling and manipulative person for most of his life. He was unpredictable and unstable. As a result, the atmosphere of our home was super-charged with fear because you never knew if what you did would make him mad or not.

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

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

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

If you’re lying, you’re lying.

Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

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.

The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments‘ plans.

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 worst crime is faking it.

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.

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

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

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 whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

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

Knavery and flattery are blood relations.

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.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

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.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

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

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

Since the child knew his parents would give in, he tried the same trick again and again.

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

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

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

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

One may sometimes tell a lie, but the grimace that accompanies it tells the truth.

It’s plain hokum. If you can’t convince ‚em, confuse ‚em. It’s an old political trick. But this time it won’t work.

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.

When you start to realise how much of what you’ve constructed of yourself is based on deception and lies, that is a horrifying realisation.

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.

Language is a weapon of politicians, but language is a weapon in much of human affairs.

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.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

The lie is a condition of life.

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

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

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

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

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

Self-centered leaders manipulate when they move people for personal benefit. Mature leaders motivate by moving people for mutual benefit.

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.

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.

The truth is, I’ve never fooled anyone. I’ve let men sometimes fool themselves.

We do not see people as they are, but as they appear to us. And these appearances are usually misleading.

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