Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy: And Other Rules to Live By

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David Mitchell is a British actor, comedian and writer. He is one half of the comedic duo Mitchell and Webb, alongside Robert Webb, whom he met at Cambridge University. There they were both part of the Cambridge Footlights, of which Mitchell became President. Together the duo starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show in which Mitchell plays Mark Corrigan. The show received a BAFTA and won three British Comedy Awards, while Mitchell won the award for Best Comedy Performance in 2009. The duo have written and starred in several sketch shows including The Mitchell and Webb Situation, That Mitchell and Webb Sound and most recently That Mitchell and Webb Look. Mitchell and Webb also star in the UK version of Apple's Get a Mac advertisement campaign. Their first film, Magicians, in which Mitchell plays traditional magician Harry, was released on 18 May 2007. Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs. –Albert Einstein A lie is enough to prove you are a liar. Lies help people to forget about the things you have done in the past and remain constant for whole future as doubt. – Nishan Panwar Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning. – Joseph B. Wirthlin

He blames David Cameron. “In 1975, Harold Wilson wanted to stay in the EU,” he says. “He called the referendum and he won it. That’s because he was a good politician. David Cameron is a second-rate idiot. He called the referendum to keep his party together. It was nothing to do with the country resolving its issues and it didn’t go the way he expected because as well as being self-interested he was stupid and wrong.”When it was just me on my own, things being probably fine was just good enough. But probably fine isn't good enough when I'm thinking about my child. Suddenly you need things to be definitely fine - and things are never definitely fine and that's frightening. The secret to getting away with lying is believing with all your heart. That goes for lying to yourself, even more so than lying to another. – Elizabeth Bear It feels like the world is split into two and the left is just eating itself and the right is marching under terrifying extremist banners Born in Salisbury, Wiltshire, Mitchell is the son of a couple who ran a West Country pub in the Seventies and then moved to Oxford, where they became lecturers in hotel management. He began to tread the boards at New College prep school in Oxford, but never thought he had a real talent for comedy. Is there not a positive in more people having a say? “Freedom of speech is a positive [but] with the state the online environment now and the extent the more conventional news media feed off it for column inches, there’s a risk freedom of speech slightly eating itself,” he says. “Maybe it will change and people will become a bit more inured to it but it makes me more trepidatious about how I express myself and it definitely makes me less funny. [Comedians put things] in an arresting and surprising way but that very instinct will inevitably draw you close to lines that are now being essentially policed by online vigilantes.”

It’s these echo chambers of social outrage, rather than the cause of the outrage, that appear to bother him most. As much as he is ardently in favour of remaining in the EU, what really troubles him is the toxic nature of the debate, and the manner in which division has become embedded in mutual animosity. By nature, he’s a polite chap, alive to the other’s point of view. That said, there is one person for whom he is inclined to suspend his more nuanced rules of engagement. David Cameron really seems to get his goat. Why him, in particular? I got this from Audible the last time I had credits to spare (coincidentally right before cancelling Audible... again). I love David Mitchell. I'm not British, but I think David Mitchell may be my spirit animal. (Well, except regarding how he feels about surround sound. REALLY, David?? You look behind you to see what that explosion was? LOL Whut? OK.) A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood. – William Shenstone But the sense of the daftness and stupidity of things has always been my root to opinions that can be entertaining to be read, or heard." Before I can point out that he’s only 45, he adds: “I’m a bit young to be finished with the world.”

I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to but that they always know when they're being told the truth. – Sean Penn Opinion columns for The Observer, ranging across the usual set of current affairs and personal observations, but most closely circling British politics of the last four years. A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. – Winston Churchill Does he have any hope for the future? He laughs. “A slightly more optimistic part of me says things do shift over time,” he says. “The fact that there are so many young people and children going on the streets and saying ‘Stop f**king up the planet, it needs to remain habitable’ is a sign of a demographic shift in attitudes. Sometimes things just get better. That’s the closest I’ve got to solid optimism at the moment.” Acting Lies sound like facts to those who’ve been conditioned to misrecognize the truth. – DaShanne Stokes

Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them. – Christian Nestell Bovee A good liar knows that the most efficient lie is always a truth that has had a key piece removed from it. – Carlos Ruiz Zafon Mitchell is obviously used to working with words, and his pieces are excellent writing of the sort that often goes under-appreciated -- too much of a sprint next to the memoirist's personal novel, and without any overarching argument to make into a nonfiction book of any other sort. They really are well-crafted, though, something which is only made more enjoyable by Mitchell's self-critical rambling, ability to draw fine distinctions, and willingness to apologise for all of that with some silly wordplay. Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. – MaimonidesAnyone who doesn't take the truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones, either. – Albert Einstein