Each time You Lie

Each time you lie, even if you’re not caught, you “become a little more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valanced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are. You become the person who could commit such an act, and how you are known in the world is irrelevant to this state of being.” In the end, who we are inside matters more than what others think of us.

Michael Dirda in a Washington Post review of Plato at the Googleplex by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein