Question:hard

Choose the appropriate words to fill in the blanks.

If a person makes the statement: "I never speak the truth." The person can be said to be ______.

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Test both possibilities, the statement being true and the statement being false, and see which one holds up without contradiction.
Updated On: Jul 10, 2026
  • speaking the truth.
  • lying.
  • lying as well as speaking the truth.
  • making a logically contradictory statement.
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The Correct Option is D

Solution and Explanation

This question is a version of the classic liar paradox, dressed up as a sentence-completion item. The statement "I never speak the truth" talks about itself, and that self-reference is what breaks the usual true or false test.

  1. Option 1, speaking the truth: If we say the person is speaking the truth here, then it must be really true that they never speak the truth. But they just spoke truthfully in saying so, which cancels out the claim itself. So this option cannot hold up.
  2. Option 2, lying: If we say the person is lying, then the opposite of "I never speak the truth" should hold, meaning they do sometimes speak the truth. That seems fine on the surface, but it does not pin down anything definite about this particular statement, and does not resolve the loop the sentence creates about itself.
  3. Option 3, lying as well as speaking the truth: A single statement cannot be true and false at the same time, so calling it both is not a valid logical position; this option just avoids the problem instead of solving it.
  4. Option 4, originally D, making a logically contradictory statement: Testing both cases, true and false, each leads back to a contradiction, which is exactly the sign of a self-referential paradox. The honest description of the statement is that it contradicts itself, regardless of which value we try to assign it.

So neither "truth" nor "lie" can be pinned on the statement without a contradiction showing up, and the only description that survives both tests is that the statement is logically contradictory.

Let's summarize:

  • A statement that refers to its own truth or falsehood can create a paradox, as with the liar paradox.
  • If assuming a statement is true creates a contradiction, and assuming it is false also creates a contradiction, the statement itself is logically contradictory.

So the person can be said to be making a logically contradictory statement, which is option 4 (originally D).

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