Lie? Truth? U? Me?

“Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object”

As the victims, the perpetrators, or the witnesses we all know lies and almost everyone, honest enough, would admit to lying at some point. It would, however be far more accurate to state that we all have lied and we continue to lie everyday of our lives. Yet almost everyone frowns upon the liar and claims to abhor lies, regardless of the hypocrisy of this. The greatest difficulty in any discussion of lies or lying is how to define what constitutes as a lie. While it maybe straightforward enough to say whether something is true or false, it is not as simple to distinguish between truth and lies. What is ‘true’ resides in reality and by definition is fixed and self evident, while ‘truth’ resides in knowledge and belief, and is not as clear-cut.

“You see, a person I knew used to divide human beings into three categories: those who prefer having nothing to hide rather than being obliged to lie, those who prefer lying to having nothing to hide, and finally those who like both lying and the hidden. I’ll let you choose which case suits me best.

But what do I care? Don’t lies eventually lead to the truth.”