A lie has no power whatsoever by its mere utterance; its power emerges when someone else agrees to believe the lie.

The line frames deception as a social transaction rather than a unilateral act. A liar can propose an untruth, but it only becomes consequential when an audience—out of trust, fear, convenience, tribal loyalty, or cognitive bias—accepts it as true and acts on it. The quote shifts moral and practical attention from the speaker alone to the conditions that make falsehood persuasive: credibility cues, repetition, institutional authority, and the listener’s incentives. It also implies a remedy: strengthening critical thinking, verification habits, and accountability reduces the “market” for lies, thereby stripping them of their effectiveness even when they are loudly or frequently asserted.