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A lie may fool someone else, but it tells you the truth: you're weak.
Tom Wolfe
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Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that lying indicates a weakness in character rather than strength.

Tom Wolfe's quote highlights the inherent contradiction in lying, suggesting that while it may deceive others, it ultimately reveals a fundamental truth about oneself. By resorting to dishonesty, an individual exposes their own vulnerabilities and lacks the courage to confront reality honestly, thereby admitting a certain weakness of character.

Themes

LieTruthWeaknessCharacterHonesty

In practice

Example use cases

During a motivational speech about the importance of integrity.

More from Tom Wolfe

No machines will ever truly fully figure the brain out, because the brain's performance is constantly altered or else constrained by this inanimate, rogue artifact you can't control, namely, speech.
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And - of course! - the Non-people. The whole freaking world was full of people who were bound to tell you they weren't qualified to do this or that but they were determined to go ahead and do just that thing anyway.
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The whole conviction of my life now rests upon the belief that loneliness, far from being a rare and curious phenomenon, peculiar to myself and to a few other solitary men, is the central and inevitable fact of human existence.
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Driving a stock car does not require much handling ability, at least not as compared to Grand Prix racing, because the tracks are simple banked ovals and there is almost no shifting of gears. So, qualifying becomes a test of raw nerve - of how fast a man is willing to take a curve.
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I have discovered that for me - now, maybe it doesn't work for everybody - for me, it is much more effective to arrive at any situation as a man from Mars than to try to fit in.
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There has been a time on earth when poets had been young and dead and famous - and were men. But now the poet as the tragic child of grandeur and destiny had changed. The child of genius was a woman, now, and the man was gone.
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