Falsehood Quotes - Page 13

As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.

Oliver Goldsmith

Squares, Circles, Voice

Oliver Goldsmith (1856). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Comprising His Poems, Comedies, Essays, and Vicar of Wakefield”, p.397

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Before His gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves... His gaze, the touch of His heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation "as through fire". But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of His love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God.

Pope Benedict XVI

Faith, Pain, Blessed

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To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, "by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only." Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

Thomas Jefferson

Media Control, Sound, Principles

Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.274, Cambridge University Press

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There could be no justice, unless there were also injustice; no courage, unless there were cowardice; no truth, unless there were falsehood.

Chrysippus

Justice, Injustice, Cowardice

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Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

Khalil Gibran

Beautiful, Stars, Truth

Khalil Gibran “Khalil The Heretic”, Library of Alexandria

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Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure you.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Heart, Framed

Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas Moore (1833). “The works: With a biographical sketch”, p.65

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On the much revered family of North American mythology - and a metaphor for the Ruling Alliance:
Sacred family! .... The supposed home of all the virtues, where innocent children are tortured into their first falsehoods, where wills are broken by parental tyranny, and self-respect smothered by crowded, jostling egos.

August Strindberg

Children, Home, Self

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To the rulers of the state then, if to any, it belongs of right to use falsehood, to deceive either enemies or their own citizens, for the good of the state: and no one else may meddle with this privilege.

Plato

Plato, Lying, Enemy

Plato (1866). “The Republic of Plato, tr. with an analysis and notes, by J.L. Davies and D.J. Vaughan”, p.80

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In like manner, everyone who has received from God the power of distinguishing and yet follows an unskillful pastor and receives a false opinion for the truth shall be punished ... Be not deceived: if any man follows him who separates from the truth, he shall not inherit the kingdom of God; and if any man does not stand aloof from the preacher of falsehood he shall be condemned to Hell.

Ignatius of Antioch

Men, Doe, Kingdoms

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I often remember in this false, distorted way, and the memories are often cloaked in the colour of the sun. Sometimes I feel nostalgia for things I knew I hated when they were happening, for days spent at the beach or the swimming pool with my sisters.
When I pick my memories apart, I realise my mind has merely played back the objective ingredients, the clichéd apparatus of happiness, the sun, the sound of splashing water, ice-cream on parched lips and cold fizzy drink on a hot tongue, and laugher too. My memory often peddles on the falsehood of past happiness. I should know this.

M. J. Hyland

Beach, Memories, Swimming

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He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

Thomas Jefferson

Lying, Believe, Heart

Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.81, Courier Corporation

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Economic history is a never-ending series of episodes based on falsehoods and lies, not truths. It represents the path to big money. The object is to recognize the trend whose premise is false, ride that trend and step off before it is discredited.

George Soros

Lying, Economic History, Trends

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All... religions show the same disparity between belief and practice, and each is safe till it tries to exclude the rest. Test each sect by its best or its worst as you will, by its high-water mark of virtue or its low-water mark of vice. But falsehood begins when you measure the ebb of any other religion against the flood-tide of your own. There is a noble and a base side to every history.

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

Religious, Practice, Water

Thomas Wentworth HIGGINSON (1872). “The Sympathy of Religions; an Address Delivered ... February 6, 1870”, p.18

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To wipe off the froth of falsehood from the foaming lips of inebriated virtue, when fresh from the sexless orgies of morality and reeling from the delirious riot of religion, may doubtless be a charitable office.

Algernon Charles Swinburne

Office, Religion, Wipe

Algernon Charles Swinburne, Clyde Kenneth Hyder (1966). “Swinburne Replies: Notes on Poems and Reviews, Under the Microscope [and] Dedicatory Epistle”, p.51, Syracuse University Press

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It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.

Thomas Szasz

Age, Majority, Taught

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But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that, it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and of civil liberty.

Thomas Jefferson

Freedom, Liberty, Noble

Thomas Jefferson, Joyce Appleby, Terence Ball (1999). “Jefferson: Political Writings”, p.273, Cambridge University Press

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It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

Thomas Jefferson

Office, Abuse, Lines

Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.463

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From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

Thomas Jefferson

Reading, Thinking, Years

Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.514, Cosimo, Inc.

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In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Walter Savage Landor

Politics, Argument, Politician

Walter Savage Landor (1856). “Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor”, p.23

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I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself . . . But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Dog, Thinking, Hearing

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To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.

Robert A. Heinlein

Learning, Libertarian, Young

Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.322, Penguin

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He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.

Robert Kennedy

Lying, Presidential, Telling The Truth

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Is it too much to expect from the schools that they train their students not only to interpret but to criticize; that is, to discriminate what is sound from error and falsehood, to suspend judgement if they are not convinced, or to judge with reason if they agree or disagree?

Mortimer Adler

School, Errors, Judging

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A reliable way to make people believe in falsehoods is frequent repetition, because familiarity is not easily distinguished from truth. Authoritarian institutions and marketers have always known this fact.

Daniel Kahneman

Believe, People, Way

Daniel Kahneman (2011). “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, p.71, Macmillan

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We have a strange illusion that mere time cancels sin. I have heard others, and I have heard myself, recounting cruelties and falsehoods committed in boyhood as if they were no concern of the present speaker's, and even with laughter. But mere time does nothing either to the fact or to the guilt of a sin. The guilt is washed out not by time but by repentance and the blood of Christ: if we have repented these early sins we should remember the price of our forgiveness and be humble.

C. S. Lewis

Laughter, Humble, Blood

C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.105, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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