Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that liars and their victims both want to avoid deception, highlighting a shared human desire for honesty.
Sissela Bok's quote illustrates the complex relationship between liars and those they deceive, emphasizing that both parties have a mutual interest in truthfulness. It points to a fundamental aspect of human interactions: the desire for trust and authenticity. The act of lying creates a paradox where the liar simultaneously yearns for the same honesty that they disrupt, reflecting on the moral implications of deceit and the inherent struggles of interpersonal relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about integrity in leadership, one might quote this to emphasize the value of honesty.
I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.
To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.
Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When it is damaged, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse
Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked?
We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.
Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.
The attributes of a great lady may still be found in the rule of the four S's: Sincerity, Simplicity, Sympathy, and Serenity.
Look at your hand. Its structure does not match the structure of assertions, the structure of facts. Your hand is continuous. Assertions and facts are discontinuous.... You lift your index finger half an inch; it passes through a million facts. Look at the way your hand goes on and on, while the clock ticks, and the sun moves a little further across the sky.
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Ultimately we want to use dream to liberate ourselves from all relative conditions, not simply to improve them.
Of course God is endlessly multi-dimensional so every religion that exists on earth represents some face, some side of God.
So inscrutable is the arrangement of causes and consequences in this world, that a two-penny duty on tea, unjustly imposed in a sequestered part of it, changes the condition of all its inhabitants.
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