“Everybody Lies” is the House M.D. episode title that became the show's recurring slogan about patient honesty.
The phrase appears in the pilot episode, “Everybody Lies,” which premiered on November 16, 2004. House uses the idea to argue that patients, relatives, and sometimes doctors conceal information, whether from embarrassment, fear, confusion, or a desire to control the situation.
The slogan functions as a diagnostic principle in the series. House's team must compare what patients say with physical evidence, test results, and behavior. That approach is dramatized for television, but medical history-taking does involve recognizing that recall can be incomplete and that sensitive details may be omitted.
The phrase is easy to confuse with “Everybody Dies,” the title of the series finale. “Everybody Lies” belongs to the beginning of the show, while “Everybody Dies” belongs to its conclusion. The repeated slogan helped define House's skeptical worldview and became one of the drama's most recognizable lines.