For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist

Essay (1971-11-18), “Lying in Politics,” The New York Review of Books
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Revised and collected in Crises of the Republic (1972).