The Will to Power · Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
543.
In a world which was essentially false, truthfulness would be an _anti-natural tendency_: its only purpose would be to provide a means of attaining to a _higher degree of falsity._ For a world of truth and Being to be simulated, the truthful one would first have to be created (it being understood that he must believe himself to be "truthful"). Simple, transparent, not in contradiction with himself, lasting, remaining always the same to himself, free from faults, sudden changes, dissimulation, and form: such a man conceives a world of Being as "_God_" in His own image. In order that truthfulness may be possible, the whole sphere in which man moves must be very tidy, small, and respectable: the advantage in every respect must be with the truthful one.--Lies, tricks, dissimulations, must cause astonishment.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.