Wit & Attitude Quote by Finley Peter Dunne

A lie that knows what it wants is more dangerous than a sloppy falsehood, because it comes with a business plan. Finley Peter Dunne, the journalist behind the famously canny Mr. Dooley columns, is taking aim at a particular American talent: wrapping self-interest in the language of necessity. The “purpose” matters because it signals design. This isn’t error, rumor, or even garden-variety spin; it’s narrative engineering, built to move people, excuse power, or manufacture consent.

The second clause is the knife-twist: “the most profitable.” Dunne isn’t speaking only about money, though he’s certainly gesturing at it - the newspaper economy of attention, circulation wars, advertisers happy to ride a moral panic. Profit also means political profit, social profit, reputational profit: the kind of return you get when a story flatters your tribe and punishes the right enemies. A purposeless lie fizzles. A purposeful one recruits.

Context sharpens the cynicism. Dunne wrote during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, when industrial capital, machine politics, yellow journalism, and imperial ambitions all competed to define “truth” for a mass audience. His line anticipates a modern media logic: the most durable falsehoods aren’t those that sound plausible; they’re those that solve a problem for someone. The subtext is bleakly pragmatic: if you want to understand why a lie spreads, follow its function, not its facts.