Falsehood Quotes - Page 12

History is not truth versus falsehoods, but a mixture of both, a mélange of tendencies, reactions, dreams, errors, and power plays. What's important is what we make of it; its moral use. By writing history, we can widen readers' thinking and deepen their sympathies in every direction. Perhaps history should show us not how to control the world, but how to enlarge, deepen, and discipline ourselves.

Gretel Ehrlich

Dream, Writing, Thinking

Gretel Ehrlich (1989). “Heart Mountain”, Vintage

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falsehood is not more unjustifiable than unsafe.

Fanny Burney

Lying, Unsafe

Frances Burney, Fanny Burney (2015). “Complete Works of Frances Burney (Delphi Classics)”, p.61, Delphi Classics

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For no falsehood can endure
Touch of celestial temper.

John Milton

Lying, Endure, Temper

John Milton, James BUCHANAN (Grammarian.) (1773). “The First Six Books of Milton's Paradise Lost, Rendered Into Grammatical Construction ... With Notes ... To which are Prefixed Remarks on Ellipsis and Transposition ... By J. Buchanan”, p.296

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Woman is the daughter of falsehood, a sentinel of hell, the enemy of peace.

John of Damascus

Daughter, Scary, Enemy

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Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.

Thomas Aquinas

Differences, Evil, True Or False

Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis (1997). “Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2”, p.335, Hackett Publishing

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No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!

Anton Szandor LaVey

Dogma, Stifling, Pens

"The Satanic Bible". Book by Anton Szandor LaVey, 1969.

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There is a falsehood that some are born with an attraction to their own kind, with nothing they can do about it. They are just 'that way' and can only yield to those desires. That is a malicious and destructive lie. While it is a convincing idea to some, it is of the devil. No one is locked into that kind of life. From our premoral life we were directed into a physical body. There is no mismatching of bodies and spirits. Boys are to become men-masculine, manly men-ultimately to become husbands and fathers. No one is predestined to a perverted use of these powers.

Boyd K. Packer

Husband, Lying, Father

"To Young Men Only". Boyd K. Packer's Address at the Priesthood Session of General Conference, October 2, 1976.

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Men forsook God, and made carved images of men. Since therefore an image of man was falsely worshipped as God, God became truly Man, that the falsehood might be done away.

Cyril of Jerusalem

Men, Done, Might

Cyril of Jerusalem (2012). “The Sacred Writings of Cyril of Jerusalem (Annotated Edition)”, p.147, Jazzybee Verlag

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Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Tryon Edwards

Self, Criticism, Desert

Tryon Edwards (2015). “The New Dictionary of Thoughts”, p.173, Ravenio Books

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There are truths on this side of the Pyrenees which are falsehoods on the other

Michel de Montaigne

Responsibility, Sides, Ethics

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Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Lying, Men, Support

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Anne Applebaum (2007). “The Gulag Archipelago Volume 2: An Experiment in Literary Investigation”, Harper Perennial Modern Classics

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If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field.

Michel de Montaigne

Wisdom, Honesty, Liars

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In classical understanding, education is the attempt to "lead out" from within the self a core of wisdom that has the power to resist falsehood and live in the light of truth, not by external norms but by reasoned and reflective self-determination. The inward teacher is the living core of our lives that is addressed and evoked by any education worthy of the name.

Parker J. Palmer

Education, Teacher, Determination

Parker J. Palmer (2012). “The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life”, p.32, John Wiley & Sons

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For too long, too many people dependent on Social Security have been cruelly frightened by individuals seeking political gain through demagoguery and outright falsehood, and this must stop.

Ronald Reagan

Long, People, Political

Reagan, Ronald (1982). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1981”, p.1157, Best Books on

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There has never been nationhood without falsehood.

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

Nationalism

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That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

John Milton

Revenge, Couches, Malice

John Milton (1852). “The Poetical Works of John Milton”, p.116

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There is no such thing as absolute truth and absolute falsehood. The scientific mind should never recognise the perfect truth or the perfect falsehood of any supposed theory or observation. It should carefully weigh the chances of truth and error and grade each in its proper position along the line joining absolute truth and absolute error.

Henry Augustus Rowland

Science, Errors, Perfect

Henry Augustus Rowland (1902). “The physical papers of Henry Augustus Rowland ...: John Hopkins University, 1876-1901”

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A Falsehood is, in one sense, a dead thing; but too often it moves about, galvanized by self-will, and pushes the living out of their seats.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Lying, Moving, Self

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Do you want a sign that you're asleep? Here it is: you're suffering. Suffering is a sign that you're out of touch with the truth. Suffering is given to you that you might open your eyes to the truth, that you might understand that there's falsehood somewhere, just as physical pain is given to you so you will understand that there is disease or illness somewhere. Suffering occurs when you clash with reality. When your illusions clash with reality, when your falsehoods clash with truth, then you have suffering. Otherwise there is no suffering.

Anthony de Mello

Inspirational, Pain, Eye

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It is in the name of Moses that Bellarmin thunderstrikes Galileo; and this great vulgarizer of the great seeker Copernicus, Galileo, the old man of truth, the magian of the heavens, was reduced to repeating on his knees word for word after the inquisitor this formula of shame: "Corde sincera et fide non ficta abjuro maledico et detestor supradictos errores et hereses." Falsehood put an ass's hood on science.

Victor Hugo

Science, Men, Names

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Truth and falsity, indeed understanding, is not necessarily something purely intellectual, remote from feelings and attitudes. ... It is in the total conduct of men rather than in their statements that truth or falsehood lives, more in what a man does, in his real reaction to other men and to things, in his will to do them justice, to live at one with them. Here lies the inner connection between truth and justice. In the realm of behavior and action, the problem recurs as to the difference between piece and part.

Max Wertheimer

Life, Attitude, Real

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... the besetting danger is not so much of embracing falsehood for truth, as of mistaking a part of the truth for the whole.

John Stuart Mill

Truth, Mistake, Science

John Stuart Mill (1873). “Coleridge. M. de Tocqueville on democracy in America. Bailey on Berkeley's theory of vision. Michelets' history of France. The claims of labor. Guizot's essays and lectures on history. Early Grecian history and legend”, p.11

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The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.

Thomas Jefferson

Civil Rights, Abandon, Presses

Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. X (in 12 Volumes): Correspondence and Papers 1803-1807”, p.368, Cosimo, Inc.

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Whether statistics be an art or a science... or a scientific art, we concern ourselves little. It is the basis of social and political dynamics, and affords the only secure ground on which the truth or falsehood of the theories and hypotheses of that complicated science can be brought to the test.

Adolphe Quetelet

Art, Science, Political

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In short, there are certain fundamental requisites for wise and resolute democratic leadership. It must build on hope, not on fear; on honesty, not on falsehood; on justice, not on injustice; on public tranquility, not on violence; on freedom, not on enslavement.

Edmund Ezra Day

Wise, Truth, Honesty

"Education for Freedom and Responsibility: Selected Essays".

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