Falsehood Quotes - Page 14

• Truth is brighter than Light Falsehood darker than night Revenge is keener than Axe and Love is softer than melting wax

  Cassandra Clare

  Revenge, Night, Love Is

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• Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear. Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people. And falsehoods the truths of other people. Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself. To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.

  Oscar Wilde

  Fashion, Husband, Vulgarity Is

  "Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young" (1894)

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• We are slaves, all of us...Some are slaves to fear. Others are slaves to reason—or base desire. It is our lot to be slaves...and the question must be to what shall we owe our indenture? Will it be to truth or to falsehood, hope or despair, light or darkness? I choose to serve the light, even though that bondage often lies in darkness.

  Rick Yancey

  Lying, Light, Darkness

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• Time's glory is to command contending kings,
  To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Kings, Truth

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• The first law of history is to dread uttering a falsehood; the next is not to fear stating the truth; lastly, the historian's writings should be open to no suspicion of partiality or animosity.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Writing, Law, History

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• There is only one thing infamous in love, and that is a falsehood.

  Paul Bourget

  Life, Infamous, One Thing

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• A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders." He touched her lightly with two fingers. "Some liars blink. Some stare. Some look away. Some lick their lips. Many coer their mouths just before they tell a lie, as if to hide their deceit. Other signs may be more subtle, but they are always there. A false smile and a true one may look alike, but they are as different as dusk from dawn.

  George R. R. Martin

  Liars, Lying, Eye

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.2709, Bantam

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• The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

  John Stuart Mill

  Truth, Ideas, Forever

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• No one, in the world's whole history, ever attempted to substantiate a truth by a miracle. Truth scorns the assistance of miracle. Nothing but falsehood ever attested itself by signs and wonders. No miracle ever was performed, and no sane man ever thought he had performed one, and until one is performed, there can be no evidence of the existence of any power superior to, and independent of nature.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Independent, Men, Miracle

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.34, Library of Alexandria

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• I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Justice implies knowledge of the right and proper place for a thing or a being to be; of right as against wrong; of the mean and limit; of spiritual gain as against loss; of truth as against falsehood.

  Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas

  Spiritual, Mean, Loss

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• A man does not need to be a wizard to know truth from falsehood, not if he has eyes. You need only learn to read a face. Look at the eyes. The mouth. The muscles here, at the corners of the jaw, and here, where the neck joins the shoulders.

  George R. R. Martin

  Eye, Men, Doe

  George R. R. Martin (2012). “George R. R. Martin's A Game of Thrones 5-Book Boxed Set (Song of Ice and Fire Series): A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and and A Dance with Dragons”, p.2709, Bantam

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• My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.

  Anton Chekhov

  Inspiration, Two, Body

  Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1974). “Letters of Anton Chekhov”, Jonathan Cape

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• Who can tell truth from falsehood any more? I say it, and you feel it in your hearts: no man or woman on this big small earth. How should our sages miss the mark of life, and our most skillful players lose the game? your hearts will tell you, as my heart has told me: because all know, and no one understands.

  e. e. cummings

  Heart, Player, Men

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• It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Believe, Limits, Stranger

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.134, Stanford University Press

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• Marianne Dashwood was born to an extraordinary fate. She was born to discover the falsehood of her own opinions, and to counteract, by her conduct, her most favourite maxims.

  Jane Austen

  Fate, Opinion, Favourite

  Jane Austen (2007). “The Complete Novels of Jane Austen”, p.230, Wordsworth Editions

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• When a fissure off the California coast started pumping and dumping oil on the nearby towns and beaches, everybody started dumping on Union Oil. Matters weren't helped one iota by a manufactured quotation attributed to Union's president, Fred Hartley, alleging his amazement at the publicity for the loss of a few birds.... Fred Hartley never said what the press reported, as the transcript and the Senate committee members definitely established. But I don't suppose the truth will ever catch up with the more colorful falsehood.

  Malcolm Forbes

  Beach, Nature, Loss

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• The governors of the world believe, and have always believed, that virtue can only be taught by teaching falsehood, and that any man who knew the truth would be wicked. I disbelieve this, absolutely and entirely. I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue, and that virtues based upon lies can only do harm.

  Bertrand Russell

  Peace, Real, Lying

  Bertrand Russell, Dora Russell (1959). “The Prospects of Industrial Civilization”, p.216, Psychology Press

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• No falsehood is so fatal as that which is made an article of faith.

  Thomas Paine

  Religion, Made, Articles

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Theological Works of Thomas Paine: To which are Added the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar”, p.260

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• When we were told that by freedom we understood free enterprise, we did very little to dispel this monstrous falsehood. Wealth and economic well-being, we have asserted, are the fruits of freedom, while we should have been the first to know that this kind of happiness has been an unmixed blessing only in this country, and it is a minor blessing compared with the truly political freedoms, such as freedom of speech and thought, of assembly and association, even under the best conditions.

  Hannah Arendt

  Country, Freedom, Blessing

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• The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, in-as-much as he who knows nothing is nearer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehood and errors.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Errors, Gossip

  Letter to John Norvell, June 11, 1807.

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• No scheme for a change of society can be made to appear immediately palatable, except by falsehood, until society has become so desperate that it will accept any change.

  T. S. Eliot

  Class, Desperate, Accepting

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Idea of a Christian Society”, p.29, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Who speaks the truth stabs falsehood to the heart.

  James Russell Lowell

  Truth, Honesty, Heart

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.116

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• Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude.

  David Hume

  Truth, Honesty, Stronger

  David Hume, J. Y. T. Greig (2011). “The Letters of David Hume: 1727-1765”, p.305, Oxford University Press, USA

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• A train of thought is never false. The falsehood lies deep in the necessities of existence.

  Joseph Conrad

  Life, Lying, Train Of Thought

  Joseph Conrad (2015). “The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad: 20 Novels & 26 Short Stories (Including Memoirs, Essays & Letters in One Single Edition): Classics of World Literature from One of the Greatest English Novelists: Heart of Darkness, The Duel, Lord Jim, The Secret Agent, Nostromo, The Shadow-Line & Under Western Eyes”, p.2294, e-artnow

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