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.
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.
Subtlety may deceive you; integrity never will.
Man's mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.
Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don't have brains enough to be honest.
Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?
Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.
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.
Life is the art of being well deceived.
Cunning is the art of concealing our own defects, and discovering the weaknesses of others.
The people of the world having once been deceived, suspect deceit in truth itself.
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.
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.
It is twice the pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
The sure way to be cheated is to think one's self more cunning than others.
The craftiest trickery are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart.
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.
We like to be deceived.
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.
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.
Nothing is more common on earth than to deceive and be deceived.
For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright, who art as black as hell, as dark as night.
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.
The crafty person is always in danger; and when they think they walk in the dark, all their pretenses are transparent.
The art of using deceit and cunning grow continually weaker and less effective to the user.
A deception that elevates us is dearer than a host of low truths.
When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.
Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.
Everyone is born sincere and die deceivers.
The art of pleasing is the art of deception.