Semiotics

"Make the Moor thank me, love me and reward me, For making him egregiously an ass."

"The world is still deceiv'd with ornament, In law, what plea so tainted and corrupt, But, being season'd with a gracious voice, Obscures the show of evil? In religion, What damned error, but some sober brow Will bless it and approve it with a text, Hiding the grossness with fair ornament?"

"The instruments of darkness tell us truths, Win us with honest trifles, to betray us In deepest consequence."

"A quicksand of deceit."

"But when the fox hath once got in his nose, He'll soon find means to make the body follow."

"They fool me to the top of my bent. I will come by and by."

"With an auspicious and a dropping eye, With mirth in funeral, and with dirge in marriage, In equal scale weighing delight and dole."

"O, what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!"

"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."

"Engin mieulx vault que force."

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

"The rulers wanted to fool people, since they saw that people have a kinship with what is truly good. They took the names of the good and assigned them to what is not good, to fool people with names and link the names to what is not good. So, as if they were doing people a favor, they took names from what is not good and transferred them to the good, in their own way of thinking. For they wished to take free people and enslave them forever."

"So rid yourselves of all badness and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all backbiting."

"The art of living is the art of knowing how to believe lies. The fearful thing about it is that, not knowing what truth may be, we can still recognize lies."

"Do not lie to one another. Strip off the old personality with its practices."

"Therefore, now that you have put away deceit, each one of you speak truth with his neighbor, because we are members belonging to one another."

"Do not deceive one another."

"In the majority of cases which are brought to me as a consulting psychologist for love and marital adjustment, there are self-deceptions to be uncovered as well as attempts to deceive other people. Beneath such love conflicts there is almost always a festering psychological core of dishonesty."

"Deceit is this world's passport: who would dare, However pure the breast, to lay it bare?"

"A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on."

"Don't lie, but don't tell the whole truth."

"When we risk no contradiction, It prompts the tongue to deal in fiction."

"Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported."

"You will destroy those who speak lies. Jehovah detests violent and deceptive people."

"You know where you are with a complete liar, but when a chap mixes some truth with his yarns, you can't trust a word he says."

"Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour."

"Fraud and prevarication are servile vices. They sometimes grow out of the necessities, always out of the habits, of slavish and degenerate spirits…. It is an erect countenance, it is a firm adherence to principle, it is a power of resisting false shame and frivolous fear, that assert our good faith and honor, and assure to us the confidence of mankind."

"You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."

"Rarus sermo illis et magna libido tacendi."

"The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and , nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on [his] clients."

"…a difficult dialogue is better than [having] no dialogue."

"A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring."

"Conversation is imperative if gaps are to be filled, and old age, it is the last gap but one."

"There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all."

"Eloquence is a republican art, as conversation is an aristocratic one."

"Each word is a singularity, or is connected with a singularity, in our way of understanding existence."

"Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind."

"British conversation is like a game of cricket or a boxing match; personal allusions are forbidden like hitting below the belt, and anyone who loses his temper is disqualified."

"Do you know that conversation is one of the greatest pleasures in life? But it wants leisure."

"The Great Conversation began before the beginnings of experimental science. But the birth of the Conversation and the birth of science were simultaneous. The earliest of the pre-Socratics were investigating and seeking to understand natural phenomena; among them were men who used mathematical notions for this purpose. Even experimentation is not new; it has been going on for hundreds of years. But faith in experimentation as an exclusive method is a modern manifestation. ...it is now regarded in some quarters... as the sole method of obtaining knowledge of any kind."

"Communication can only take place among equals."

"CONVERSATION, n. A fair to the display of the minor mental commodities, each exhibitor being too intent upon the arrangement of his own wares to observe those of his neighbor."

"He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don’t. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us."

"In our lives the revolutions that take place in the soul often derive from a specific day, or hour, or from an unforeseen but memorable conversation which disturbs us and plants new seeds that slowly grow, and of which the rest of our actions are simply the consequences and natural development."

"The pith of conversation does not consist in exhibiting your own superior knowledge on matters of small consequence, but in enlarging, improving, and correcting the information you possess, by the authority of others."

"The same thing has been said by all whom Prometheus has formed out of better clay. What pleasure could they find in the company of people with whom their only common ground is just what is lowest and least noble in their own nature—the part of them that is commonplace, trivial and vulgar? What do they want with people who cannot rise to a higher level, and for whom nothing remains but to drag others down to theirs?"

"If ... we meet a man of acknowledged mental superiority, whether generally or in his special department, it is our social duty by intelligent questioning, by an anxiety to learn from him, to force him to condescend to our ignorance, or join in our fun, till his broader sympathies are awakened, and he plays with us as if we were children. Indeed this very metaphor points out one of the very remarkable instances of social equality asserted by an inferior—I mean the outspoken freedom of the child—which possesses a peculiar charm, and often thaws the dignity or dissipates the reserve of the great man and woman whose superiority is a perpetual obstacle to them in ordinary society."

"One specialist ... may be of the greatest use in conversation. A set of specialists when they get together are either unintelligible to the average mind or exceedingly tedious."

"Men of great conversational powers almost universally practise a sort of lively sophistry and exaggeration which deceives for the moment both themselves and their auditors."

"A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' study of books."