Every lie begins with the phrase, 'Because I'm selfish.

If it is necessary sometimes to lie to others, it is always despicable to lie to oneself.

Selfishness is hypocritical by nature, and seizes on the first decent excuse as a cloak ;

it is in believing one thing while intending to communicate another that every lie is born.

…we all lie to ourselves; we tell our own selves more lies than we ever do other people.

The moment you tell somebody something dishonest, you’ve lied to yourself. Then you’ll start believing your own lie, which will disconnect you from reality and take you down the wrong road.

All liars ... lie to protect themselves, to shield their egos from the raw pain of truth.

the lie is a condition of life.

When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.

I cannot help what I am – and that is the first lie, the one I uttered to myself long ago.

I’m a liar, but an honest one. People reproach me for not always telling the same story in the same way. But this happens because I’ve invented the whole tale from the start and it seems boring to me and unkind to other people to repeat myself.

The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth.

Before you can lie to another, you must first lie to yourself.

And yet they lie all the time, both when they wish to lie and when they wish to speak the truth. They lie all the time, both to themselves and to others.