The Big Lebowski Lies and Deceit Quotes

Takes a Lebowski to know a Lebowski, it turns out. The Big Lebowski is lying through his teeth here: although he implies that The Dude is the bum, he's actually the bigger bum of the two, living in his deceased wife's mansion and stealing her fortune.

That depends on what you mean by "accomplished." Lebowski's reputation is based on deceit and manipulation. Does that make it invalid? Does it still count that he helped all those youthful "achievers"? You have to wonder what he's teaching them about achieving.

Said in reference to Bunny Lebowski. The Dude suspects that Bunny is lying to her husband, but what The Dude doesn't know is that Bunny's husband is lying to The Dude. The Dude knows that Bunny is in debt, so he figures she staged a kidnapping just to get away from it all.

Walter tries to get The Dude to agree to throw the kidnappers a "ringer" briefcase containing his dirty undies instead of the real briefcase containing the money. The dramatic irony of this situation is that it's a lie within a lie: Walter and The Dude throw out a ringer for a ringer. Anyway, The Dude resists going along with the plan. He's a man of integrity under that slovenly appearance. Plus, he doesn't want to get himself killed by the angry kidnappers. He just wants to pay up and get everything over with.

There's Maude, sniffing out the truth under a pile of lies in the only way she knows how: frankly and brusquely. Maude has got her own manipulative agenda, though. She wants The Dude to be the sperm donor for her baby. Why? Good question.

Ever-confident Walter reassures The Dude that what looks like Bunny's toe isn't actually Bunny's toe. Weirdly enough, Walter is right: he's caught the kidnappers in a lie. A girlfriend of one of the kidnappers sacrificed her toe for the cause. What Walter is saying is that you can make pretty much anything look the way you want it to.

This is a bold-faced lie. Uli has no intention of cutting off The Dude's Johnson. He just wants to intimidate the peace-loving Dude into giving him Bunny's ransom money. The nihilists try to manipulate people by being intimidating, but they're not all that good at it.

It's with this line that Maude deceives The Dude into visiting the doctor, presumably because she bruised him on the jaw. She really just wants to check out his fertility and potency so she can trick him into getting her pregnant. Because she's so smart, Maude is one of the best liars in the film.

Bunny sings Elvis Presley's "Viva Las Vegas" as she drives back home from visiting friends in Palm Springs. She's lied to the Big Lebowski, letting Uli claim she was kidnapped so they could extort money from him. Bunny is not as dangerous as the other liars in the film—just clueless and reckless. Her biggest manipulation was when she married Lebowski for his money and then proceeded to spend him into bankruptcy. He probably deserved it for thinking a 20 year old was interested in him in the first place. Some serious self-deception there.

Big is pretty straightforward about the fact that he's going to accuse The Dude of stealing the ransom money. It's a total frame-up, of course, because the Big Lebowski never even gave him any money. What this quote shows is that Big is confident that his version of the story is the one that will be believed because he's rich and famous while The Dude looks like a loser. It's a sad truth that in situations like these, people tend to believe the rich guy.