"Lying in the political sphere has gotten out of hand, and because people tend to dismiss things that challenge their preconceived notions of the world, fact checkers can only play a small part in remedying the problem."
"If Edith Wharton lived in the Age of Innocence, surely we now live in the Age of Deception."
"Studies by several different researchers have shown that the number of lies we're told each day is anywhere from 20 - 200. To many, that will seem shockingly high. Yet it isn't, in light of humans being ill-suited to detect lies. The average human can detect a lie only 54% of the time."
"Truth in our society often takes a back seat to securing gainful consequences."
"Lying is the rule, not the exception."
"One-year-olds learn concealment. Five-year-olds lie outright: they manipulate via flattery. Nine-year-olds - masters of the cover-up. By the time you enter college, you're going to lie to your mom in one out of every five interactions."
"By the time we enter this work world and we're breadwinners, we enter a world that's just cluttered with spam, fake, digital friends, partisan media, ingenious identity thieves, world-class Ponzi schemers - a deception epidemic."
"Lying is a cooperative act. Think about it. A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance. Its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie."
"We lie more to strangers than we lie to co-workers. Extroverts lie more than introverts. Men lie eight times more about themselves than they do other people. Women lie more to protect other people."
"Tales of cheating on school and college tests are rife. There have been instances where teachers have given students test answers in order to make themselves look good on their performance reviews. Mentors who should be teaching the opposite are sending a message that lying and cheating are acceptable."
"Liars do look you in the eye. They do not always stutter, stammer, blush or fidget."
"Good liars are skilled at reading others well, putting them at ease, managing their own emotions, and intuitively sensing how others perceive them."
"Speaking of trust, ever since I wrote this book, 'Liespotting,' no one wants to meet me in person anymore - no, no, no, no, no. They say, 'It's okay. We'll email you.' I can't even get a coffee date at Starbucks. My husband's like, 'Honey, deception? Maybe you could have focused on cooking. How about French cooking?'"
"Not all lies are harmful. Sometimes we're willing participants in deception for the sake of social dignity, maybe to keep a secret that should be kept secret, secret. We say, 'Nice song.' 'Honey, you don't look fat in that, no.'"
"Deception can cost billions. Think Enron, Madoff, the mortgage crisis. Or in the case of double agents and traitors, like Robert Hanssen or Aldrich Ames, lies can betray our country. They can compromise our security. They can undermine democracy. They can cause the deaths of those that defend us."
"If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spouse in one out of every 10 interactions. Now, you may think that's bad. If you're unmarried, that number drops to three."
"Honest people remember stories in the order of emotional prominence, but liars will recount a story in chronological order. Memory rarely works that way."
"Pay attention to science and not myths: We think liars won't look you in the eyes, but it turns out an honest person will only look you in the eyes about 60 percent of the time."
"A liar often smiles subtly while telling a lie; it's an unconscious expression of his delight in getting away with a whopper."
"Study after study shows that people are much less likely to lie to a person they consider to be honest."
"A good lie detector doesn't jump to conclusions but tries to understand the person across the table, her personality, and her motivations. Your goal as a lie spotter isn't to point the finger and say, 'You're lying' - your goal is to get to the truth."
"Con men look for human frailty to exploit. This is most often greed. Trump found a different vice: anger. The emotional are always the most susceptible to manipulation."
"One immutable trait of the gullible is that they are credulous to a fault. Though no-doubt well-meaning, the naive are Trump's base."
"Cultists do not want to admit they have been manipulated by charisma. Nigerian money scheme victims do not want to accept that they had been swindled. To accept those realities is to accept their own faults. Denial of our own weaknesses is something we all suffer from time to time."
"Any normal candidate who mocked the disabled or made crude reference to a woman's menstrual cycle or dabbled in 9/11 conspiracy theories would be out of the race. Trump's fans remain. And wait for more."
