Pamela Meyer Quotes

"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."

"A liar often smiles subtly while telling a lie; it's an unconscious expression of his delight in getting away with a whopper."

"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."

"Business is a battlefield. You need to be able to go to battle with your team members. Like the military. Know them, trust them, and know who you're working with."

"Nothing is certain in life but death and taxes. And in Donald Trump's case, lies."

"Honest people remember stories in the order of emotional prominence, but liars will recount a story in chronological order. Memory rarely works that way."

"If Edith Wharton lived in the Age of Innocence, surely we now live in the Age of Deception."

"Contempt is the only asymmetrical expression in the muscular facial system: Disgust, fear, happiness, surprise and anger typically express themselves symmetrically. Contempt is marked by one lip corner pulled up and in a dismissive sneer."

"As someone who specializes in deception, I'll tell you this much: When someone insistently implores, 'Believe me,' don't. Pleading 'believe me' or 'trust me' - insisting to people that you are telling the truth - is a tell-tale sign that you probably aren't."

"Good liars are skilled at reading others well, putting them at ease, managing their own emotions, and intuitively sensing how others perceive them."

"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.'"

"Trump is a master obfuscator. Like an octopus escaping a predator, he releases a cloud of ink when called to the carpet on one of his many lies. His strategy? Obfuscate, then reference others. 'Millions agree,' 'everyone knows,' 'many have done it.'"

"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."

"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."

"Genuine expressions of emotion rarely persist longer than five seconds and almost never longer than 10. A fixed smile is likely to conceal anger, anxiety, or some other negative emotion."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Liars do look you in the eye. They do not always stutter, stammer, blush or fidget."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A narcissist like Trump must constantly inflate and exaggerate in order to keep the supply trains running. He has to brag about how, 'I have a very high IQ' or concoct stories about people agreeing with him."

"Like it or not, we are all liars. Thank goodness. Imagine going through life where everyone is completely honest: 'Those shoes... look like something out of an early Cyndi Lauper video.' 'Your daughter... looks like the spawn of Honey Boo Boo and Elmer Fudd.'"

"The 'problem lies' are the half-dozen or so falsehoods we hear every day that can lead us down the wrong path in our careers, change how we do business, or dramatically influence our personal lives."

"Tell the lie over and over and over. It's an art that Trump understands well. There's no better evidence than his absolutely false claim that he opposed the Iraq War in 2002."