He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
THOMAS JEFFERSON, leter to Peter Carr, Aug. 19, 1785
“The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount of lying go to the longest way” said Samuel Butler. I would not say that lying is less harmful than killing. Both of these issues allow people to be prey of such actions. We all know that killing a person for no reason can never be justified, because no one owns the right of taking someone else’s life. In some cases people dispute that killing is justifiable due to self-defense, revenge or punishment. We will never change something if killing is the only option left of solving a problem. Killing now has taken totally another direction such us in wars, attacks and so on.
However, besides killing, gradually speaking falsely becomes a habit. Undoubtedly, it would be difficult to just let it go as if somebody lied to me. Dishonesty creates a great tension within us, much greater than what we tend to believe. You can sense that tension if you are quiet enough through your body sensations. Let’s say a terrorist sets a bomb in a shopping center and the police department has caught him. The person in custody is saying that he has nothing to do with it; he is actually lying because he is the one who set the bomb. The police are not able to make him talk and actually his wife and son are in that shopping center but the terrorist does not know. In the meantime the bomb blows up and kills all the people in the shopping center including his family. A liar not only lies to himself but puts others at risk as well. There is a saying whereby I want to conclude writing more about this issue that says “He, the one who lies by trying to fool the others, has done nothing else than fooling himself”
By: Adnan Hasani