People who are lying are, understandably, more worried about being believed, so they work harder - too hard, as it were - at being believable.
Interpretation
Lying requires more effort to maintain than honesty, as liars must work hard to convince others of their falsehoods.
This quote by Christopher Voss highlights the paradox of deception: those who lie often invest considerable energy in trying to appear credible, which can lead to an overemphasis on believability. It suggests that the act of lying is not just about the falsehood itself, but also about the anxiety and labor involved in convincing others, revealing the complexities of human communication and trust.
In practice
During a negotiation, one might refer to this quote to explain why it's essential to assess trustworthiness.
When you expect to get into a negotiation, you expect to be faced by a guy that's going to attack you, a guy or gal that's going to attack or that they're going to try to get the best of you. Two-thirds of us, that makes us very defensive.
Price doesn't make deals, and salary doesn't control your career.
There are three kinds of yeses. There's commitment, confirmation, and counterfeit. People are most used to giving the counterfeit yes because they've been trapped by the confirmation yes so many times. So the way you master no is understanding what really happens when somebody says 'no.' When yes is commitment, no is protection.
The sweetest two words in any negotiation are actually, 'That's right.' Before you convince them to see what you're trying to accomplish, you have to say the things to them that will get them to say, 'That's right.'
The secret to gaining the upper hand in a negotiation is to give the other side the illusion of control. Don't try to force your opponent to admit that you are right. Ask questions, that begin with 'How?' or 'What?' so your opponent uses mental energy to figure out the answer.
Very few negotiations are begun and concluded in the same sitting. It's really rare. In fact, If you sit down and actually complete your negotiation in one sitting, you left stuff on the table.
As much as I value an union of all the states, I would not admit the southern states into the union, unless they agreed to the discontinuance of this disgraceful trade, because it would bring weakness and not strength to the union.
Maybe every other American movie shouldn't be based on a comic book. Other countries will think Americans live in an infantile fantasy land where reality is whatever we say it is and every problem can be solved with violence.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
"Things have a life of their own," the gypsy proclaimed with a harsh accent. "It's simply a matter of waking up their souls."
If human nature does alter it will be because individuals manage to look at themselves in a new way. Here and there people - a very few people, but a few novelists are among them - are trying to do this. Every institution and vested interest in against such a search: organized religion, the state, the family in its economic aspect, have nothing to gain, and it is only when outward prohibitions weaken that it can proceed: history conditions it to that extent.
True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is.
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