Liars share with those they deceive the desire not to be deceived.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that liars and their victims both want to avoid deception, highlighting a shared human desire for honesty.
Sissela Bok's quote illustrates the complex relationship between liars and those they deceive, emphasizing that both parties have a mutual interest in truthfulness. It points to a fundamental aspect of human interactions: the desire for trust and authenticity. The act of lying creates a paradox where the liar simultaneously yearns for the same honesty that they disrupt, reflecting on the moral implications of deceit and the inherent struggles of interpersonal relationships.
In practice
In a discussion about integrity in leadership, one might quote this to emphasize the value of honesty.
I believe that a guarantee of public access to government information is indispensable in the long run for any democratic society.... if officials make public only what they want citizens to know, then publicity becomes a sham and accountability meaningless.
To mature is in part to realize that while complete intimacy and omniscience and power cannot be had, self-transcendence, growth, and closeness to others are nevertheless within one's reach.
Trust is a social good to be protected just as much as the air we breathe or the water we drink. When it is damaged, the community as a whole suffers; and when it is destroyed, societies falter and collapse
Are people the best judges of their own happiness, or outsiders? In defining happiness, should we think of entire lives or of shorter periods such as moments, days, or years? And to what extent are virtue and happiness linked?
We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.
Secrecy is as indispensable to human beings as fire, and as greatly feared.
Tolerating a wrong attitude toward another person causes you to follow the spirit of the devil, no matter how saintly you are.
People hurried past, the others of the street, endless anonymous, twenty-one lives per second, race-walking in their faces and pigments, sprays of fleetest being.
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.
The Great Man... is colder, harder, less hesitating, and without fear of 'opinion'; he lacks the virtues that accompany respect and 'respectability,' and altogether everything that is the 'virtue of the herd.' If he cannot lead, he goes alone... He knows he is incommunicable: he finds it tasteless to be familiar... When not speaking to himself, he wears a mask. There is a solitude within him that is inaccessible to praise or blame.
And this is one of the most crucial definitions for the whole of Christianity; that the opposite of sin is not virtue but faith.
My diary seems to keep me whole.
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