quote · Legacy record
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.
Approximate author period: c. 1943 AD · modern
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- Author or tradition
- Ayn Rand
Attribution: attributed - Country attributed
- Not established
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- Approximate author period: c. 1943 AD · modern
Approximate author-period anchor from life dates 1905 to 1982; Wikidata Q132524, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q132524 (accessed 2026-10-08). Not a quotation composition date.
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Supplied reference C; CSV row 13233; supplied attribution, independently unverified
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