Firstly, I am a LIAR. I lie, and I do it often. Every day, every week, every MICROSECOND in my life is a lie.
However, I don't lie directly, par se. I don't go "I make $100M every second and I am richer than Bill Gates".
I don't even lie to women about myself. As I remember, the most modest man who suceeds is also the most attractive (as opposed to a lying sonofa***** whom women later discover to be a fraud). When I do something well, I let the results show.
Nor do I lie to people. I have a friend who lies, told me he got 90 for his final high school certificate score (I later discovered little flaws, and finally figured the highest score he got was only 75).
These kind of "lies" are the idiot's lies. They are lies spread by really stupid people who think they can get away, and in the end, they are caught on one of them. One lie is enough to kill you.
However, I do believe there is a fine line between LYING and DECEPTION. Lying is about making something up that is totally untrue; deception is about letting other people lie to themselves. Deception isn't making something up; its simply stating facts which suggest, or point to, a certain conclusion.
Instead of directly making up something and feeding it to people, you simply allow them to feed crap to themselves. The "truth" isn't simply facts - its how you tell the facts, how you show body language while telling the facts, and how you present the facts.
People are caught because they make a direct lie, but don't act the part. I have a class-mate who told me that he was popular at his old school - but at the school, he was a loser. What did that tell me?
The old story about a garbage man stating he worked for a "government agency", and "takes care of the nasty elements in the State" holds some truth. People are manipulated by appearance, not word. A single gesture is worth a thousand words. You don't win a negotiation by telling someone you're trustworthy. You ACT trustworthy.
I'm not even talking about women. Life in general is deception. You act sophiscated, even if you are not. By acting out a lie, you make the lie a TRUTH. By acting like a smooth, calm man, you become smooth and calm, and other people accept you as such. A clerk once studied law books. He wanted to be a lawyer. On his first interview, he didn't make a single lie. Instead, he dressed up neatly, studied the movements of great lawyers and imitated them. He was relaxed, confident, and smooth - the primary requisits for such a profession. Yet he was still a clerk who didn't have any experience with law. His name? Abraham Lincoln. He would later become the US's most inflential leaders, simply because he once performed a slight act of deception.
The current Chinese leader, Zhiang Zheming (remember that Chinese politics contains a lot of power grabbing, backstabbing, etc), once stated that:
"Deception comes with the action, not the words."