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St. Augustine identified eight kinds of lies, not all of them equally serious but all sins nonetheless. The number Mark Twain came up with, not too seriously, was 869. In practice, there are probably as many lies as there are liars, but lying can be roughly classified according to motive and context. No hard boundaries exist between these categories, since some lies are told for more than one purpose. But most of them fall within a spectrum of three broad categories.
1. Lies to protect others, or "I love your dress." Most "little white lies" belong here, well-intentioned deceptions designed to grease the gears of society. In this context, people want to be fooled. No one expects, and few would welcome, searing honesty at a dinner party. And the couple who leave early, saying the baby-sitter has a curfew, would not be thanked by the hostess if the truth were told: "Frankly, we're both bored to tears."
On rare occasions, lying to protect others can literally be a matter of life or death. Anne Frank survived as long as she did because those sheltering her and her family lied to the Nazis. The French Resistance during World War II could not have operated without deception. Military and intelligence officials will as a matter of routine lie to protect secret plans or agents at risk.
Few would condemn such protective lies. But problems arise when the alleged noble purpose of a lie loses the clarity, say, of saving innocent lives and gets muddled by other considerations. National security has been a notorious refuge for scoundrels who confuse their interests with their country's and therefore lie to cover up both. Convinced that winning the Vietnam War was essential to U.S. interests, President Lyndon Johnson was exasperated to learn that not all Americans agreed with him. These ignorant, shortsighted people therefore had to be protected from themselves, an end that justified almost any means. The long trail of lies and deceptions that followed is a lamentable matter of record.
2. Lies in the interest of the liar, or "The dog ate my homework." Here rest the domains, familiar to everyone, of being on the spot, of feeling guilty, of fearing reprimand, failure or disgrace, and on the other side of the ledger, of wishing to seem more impressive to others than the bald facts will allow. Complicity between liar and auditor rarely occurs in this category; the liar wants to get away with something. If a lie turneth away wrath, or win a job or a date on Saturday night, why not tell it? Because to do so is immoral and wrong, runs the standard, timeworn answer. But this stricture has never cut as much ice with potential liars as moralists would wish. The vast majority of criminal defendants assert their innocence, no matter what the evidence against them. Watergate was a baroque pageant of major players and spear carriers trying to lie themselves out of jeopardy.
Greed ranks right up there with guilt as an inducement to lie. The S & L debacle and the Wall Street insider trading scandals of the late 1980s involved exquisitely complex patterns of lies and deceptions. These fiascos harmed thousands of investors and left taxpayers with a staggering bill to pay, but that was not their intent. The purpose of the lies told in these massive scams was to enrich the perpetrators.