Who said, "Half the truth is often a great lie"?

Benjamin Franklin was the person who said, "Half the truth is often a great lie." The phrase was used by Franklin in the 18th century. It was said that he talked and wrote of truth when he was in Philadelphia, PA and as a member of the First Continental Congress when the group came together to organize colonial resistance to the British Parliament’s Coercive Acts.

At the time, Franklin's idea was that those who told half the truth were omitting part of the truth and were being deceptive. It is just like lying outright. Even if a statement is technically true, when it leaves out crucial pieces of information, it can't be considered a truth according to Franklin.

Some experts besides Franklin have interpreted this quote to concern situations where a person is evading blame, inflating importance or power, or just projecting confidence. Respectively, the half-truths are either used to help the speaker avoid responsibility or blame; to erase the speaker's guilt and exaggerate the speaker's role in favorable situations; or to make a shaky opinion seem like a hard fact.

Additionally, in the last instance, the half-truths are used in clever wording to strengthen an argument or weaken an opposing argument. This kind of half-truth is common in data bias, where data is presented selectively to make a theory seem stronger than it is.