The Sting Lies and Deceit Quotes

When Lonnegan realizes that Henry Gondorff has cheated him in a card game, he also realizes there's nothing he can do about it. You see, Lonnegan has been cheating also and there's no way for him to call Gondorff out without revealing this fact.

This might as well be the first rule of lying to a dangerous person. For starters, dangerous people need to think that certain things are their own idea. So you need to give them just enough lies for them to make the decisions you want. Second, you need to be vague because if they catch you in even one little lie, they'll know something's wrong and they'll mess you up.

Some of us might be surprised at how many people Henry has conned in his life. And some of us might immediately wonder how many of these people actually deserved to be conned like Mottolla in the opening scene of this movie. The truth is that for every bad person Henry has conned, there are probably a dozen who were ordinary, hard-working folks. And that might make us think twice about how much we admire Henry.

Henry likes being a grifter, and part of the enjoyment of it for him is the fact that it's risky. In his mind, there's not much point in grifting if there's no risk involved. He doesn't want to feel like he's the same as everyone else, and the deceit of his job is a big part of what attracts him to grifting.

Henry can't help but admire how good a liar his buddy Hickey is. In fact, this sort of mutual admiration is exactly what holds a lot of the conmen together. The better the liar you are, the more you're respected. But the moment you lie to your fellow grifters, your name ain't worth much.

As Niles points out, there's no way that the conmen are going to be able to fool Lonnegan on a phony stock market grift. The guy is simply too smart. This scene is definitely one of the best in the movie, since it shows us how grifters get together to figure out a specific person's weaknesses and go after them.

Joe Erie isn't the best conman in the world, but he's very loyal to his dead friend Luther and wants to do whatever he can to help avenge his death. And if this means lying to one of the most powerful and dangerous gangsters in America, he's up for it.

We might be shocked at first when Johnny reveals that Henry has cheated Lonnegan in cards. But in terms of deceit, this is exactly the kind of thing that helps you fool a person. You give that person just enough truth to make them think they're in control of a situation. Then you play them for the long con and poof, they realize one day that their money is gone.

Hooker tells Lonnegan all about Henry's cheating tactics in poker, and at first, the revelation almost gets him killed by Lonnegan. But once Lonnegan calms down, he's very willing to hear out Johnny's plan of taking down Henry. This just goes to show that a big lie involves quite a lot of risk, because taking risks helps prove to the other person how committed you are to your lie and it makes it harder to call you on it.

Time and time again, Henry is faced with a situation that threatens to expose his lie to Lonnegan. But time and time again, he comes up with a great way of keeping the lie going. In this instance, he can't handle losing another phony bet to Lonnegan, so he intentionally has some men block Lonnegan from making his bet. The fact that there's an actual term for this kind of move means that it's probably standard stuff in the world of grifters.