Excerpts from Lying by Jonathan Wallace
"I hate being lied to. Short of violence, it is the worst thing you can do to me.
Not because of God, or the Ten Commandments, or any universal moral precepts.
The reason that I hate lies is because, like you, I wish to navigate carefully through
life, and to do so I must be able to calculate my true position. When you lie to me,
you know your position but you have given me false data which obscures mine."
"Lying is theft. When you tell me something which I take to be true and as a result I
invest my time, or my money, or even my care, you have stolen these things from
me because you obtained them with false information."
"Lying creates inequality. Since you also do not like being lied to - I have never known
anyone who wanted to be deceived - you have acted as if there were two classes of humans:
you, with the right to lie, and everyone else, who must be truthful to you so that you too
will not lose your way."
"Lying treats people as means to the end you wish to accomplish, and not as ends in themselves."
"A business organization is a form of human community dedicated to commerce. As such, it can
be based on the same assumptions as any other type of community: that people are ends, not means,
and that the community is formed for the benefit of all. While a few businesses are run so that the
employees are all equal (co-ops and ESOP's), even those more hierarchically organized can be based
on the premise that people treated with honesty and concern will respond with loyalty and hard work."
"The statement "I had to lie" is never true, because there are other choices, such as the truth,
which you evaluated but found too costly and chose instead the deceitful path."