This
paradox is mentioned in the
bible, where
the apostle Paul writes "
Epimenides the Cretan asserts that all Cretans are liars" and goes on to prove himself one of the abovementioned
idiots by adding "and he is right."
The paradox results from the ability of language, or meaning if you wish, to refer to itself. This is what the word lying does.
A more sophisticated example of this paradox applies to formal logic: "I cannot prove everything that is true". This is known as the incompleteness of mathematical logic. Any form of logic or computation suffers from it that is sufficiently powerful to model its own operation and argue about its validity. Such systems can be surprisingly small: lambda calculus and Turing machines are examples.