A liar is never believed. He loses the confidence of his friends. Every one likes a person with whom he can repose confidence and thus depend on him, but we can never depend on a liar. We must always speak the truth, but if truth is bitter and may cause unnecessary offence to another, we had better remain silent unless it is our duty to speak it out. We should, however, on no account speak an untruth merely to please others.
Undue flattery is also a kind of falsehood which degrades man.
All these forms of falsehood are bad. But the worst that which we invent for our own benefit to injure others or to gain an advantage for ourselves. Truthful men are honoured everywhere. If scientists, philosophers, teachers and prophets had not divulged to the world at large the truths they had discovered, the world would not have made any progress at all. They proclaimed the truths from housetops and in several cases, they had to suffer for it, but they preferred suffering and even death to the withholding of the truths which they had seen and realised Socrates drank the cup of poison rather than retract his teachings.