Falsehood Quotes - Page 9

• I am sure, zeal or love for truth can never permit falsehood to be used in the defense of it.

  John Locke

  Defense, Permit, Used

  John Locke (1824). “The Works of John Locke: The reasonableness of Christianity. A vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, from Mr. Edward's reflections. A second vindication”, p.186

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• War is not courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game.

  Leo Tolstoy

  War, Lying, Games

  Leo Tolstoy (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Leo Tolstoy (Illustrated)”, p.1507, Delphi Classics

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• Falsehood is a critical element in fiction. Part of the thrill of being told a story is the chance of being hoodwinked. . .The telling of lies is a sort of sleight of hand that displays our deepest feelings about life.

  John Cheever

  Lying, Hands, Feelings

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• A convention is an agreed-upon falsehood, a permitted lie.

  Thornton Wilder

  Lying, Conventions

  Thornton Wilder (2014). “The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume T”, p.269, Theatre Communications Group

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• Whenever masses of people, especially educated people, know something - and when what they know is something they greatly fear because they believe it affects virtually everything they do or want to do - then most likely we stand in the presence of a vast falsehood.

  Thomas Szasz

  Believe, People, Want

  Thomas Stephen Szasz (1997). “Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences”, p.11, Syracuse University Press

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• Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. Even with no motive to be false, it is very hard to say the exact truth.

  George Eliot

  Easy, Difficult, Motive

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• Like medieval theologians we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion... The perniciousness of the anti-Communist ideology of the Truman Doctrine arises not from any patent falsehood but from its distortion and simplification of reality, from its universalization and its elevation to the status of a revealed truth.

  J. William Fulbright

  Lying, Philosophy, Reality

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• There is such a thing as a hatred of lies and dissimulation, which is the outcome of a delicate sense of humor; there is also the selfsame hatred but as the result of cowardice, in so far as falsehood is forbidden by Divine law. Too cowardly to lie.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Law, Hatred

  Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, William A. Haussmann, Maximilian August Mügge, John McFarland Kennedy, Anthony Mario Ludovici (1927). “The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche: The First Complete and Authorized English Translation”

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• Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.

  Czeslaw Milosz

  Tree, Grain, Weary Traveler

  "Child of Europe" sec. 4 (1946) (translation by Jan Darowski)

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• The gospel teaches us that though we may have lost a battle or two, the war is not yet over. With the Lord's help and the hope of the gospel, we can win out in the end. Truth ultimately triumphs over falsehood. Evil is overwhelmed by goodness. Sin, however extreme it may have been, can give way to cleansing and refreshing forgiveness. This is the great hope of the gospel, centered as it is in the life, mission and atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

  David S. Baxter

  Jesus, War, Sacrifice

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• Truth possesses within herself a penetrating force, unknown alike to error and falsehood. I say 'truth' and you understand my meaning. For the beautiful words truth and justice need not to be defined in order to be understood in their true sense.

  Anatole France

  Beautiful, Errors, Order

  Anatole France (2015). “The Amethyst Ring: Works by France”, p.75, 谷月社

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• The resurrection of Christ is therefore emphatically a test question upon which depends the truth or falsehood of the Christian religion. It is either the greatest miracle or the greatest delusion which history records.

  Philip Schaff

  Christian, Miracle, Records

  Philip Schaff (1885). “The History of the Christian Church (Complete)”, p.202, Library of Alexandria

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• The person who imagined that he could not be the victim of propaganda because he could distinguish truth from falsehood, is extremely susceptible to propaganda, because when propaganda does tell the truth, he is then convinced that it is no longer propaganda: moreover, his self-confidence makes him all the more vulnerable to attacks of which he is unaware.

  Jacques Ellul

  Self Confidence, Doe, Telling The Truth

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• The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticism, fancies, and falsehoods.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Fancy, Doctrine

  Thomas Jefferson, Allen Jayne (1984). “The religious and moral wisdom of Thomas Jefferson: an anthology”

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• It is, I believe, impossible to find in any story upon record so many and such glaring absurdities, contradictions, and falsehoods, as are in the books [The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John]. They are more numerous and striking than I had any expectation of finding, when I began this examination.

  Thomas Paine

  Believe, Book, Expectations

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• If we could believe that Jesus...countenanced the follies, falsehoods and charlatanisms which his biographers father on him, ...the conclusion would be irresistible...that he was an imposter.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Jesus, Father, Believe

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• To me, every dirty act was simply a sacrament of sin, a passionately religious protest against Christianity, which was for me the symbol of all vileness, meanness, treachery, falsehood and oppression.

  Aleister Crowley

  Religious, Dirty, Sin

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• Wikipedia works because those who know the truth are usually more numerous and committed than those who believe in a falsehood.

  Cass Sunstein

  Believe, Wikipedia, Committed

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• Truth, when we are fortunate enough to find it, is like bad-tasting medicine. It rarely comes as a pleasant surprise, because if it surprises us, it means we've been denying it for some time and have a lot of beliefs based on falsehood. It's hard to give up those beliefs.

  Orson Scott Card

  Giving Up, Mean, Medicine

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• History - a vast Mississippi of falsehoods

  Matthew Arnold

  Mississippi

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• I renounce falsehood, whatsoever be the guise it assumes, and I embrace truth, wheresoever I find it.

  Ameen Rihani

  Assuming, Embrace, Renounce

  Ameen Rihani (2016). “The Book of Khalid: A Critical Edition”, p.215, Syracuse University Press

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• We cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what obedience we owe to the magistrate, or what we may justly expect from him, unless we know what he is, why he is, and by whom he is made to be what he is.... I cannot know how to obey unless I know in what, and to whom; nor in what unless I know what ought to be commanded; nor what ought to be commanded unless I understand the original right of the commander, which is the great arcanum.

  Algernon Sidney

  May, Obedience, Made

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• My Lawyer being practiced almost from his Cradle in defending Falsehood; is quite out of his Element when he would be an Advocate for Justice, which as an Office unnatural, he always attempts with great Awkwardness if not with Ill-will.

  Jonathan Swift

  Ill Will, Justice, Office

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• Commerce makes friends, religion makes enemies; the one enriches, and the other impoverishes; the one thrives best where the truth is told, the other where falsehoods are believed.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Enemy, Truth Is, Thrive

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.4093, Library of Alexandria

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• We have at last ascertained that miracles can be perfectly understood; that there is nothing mysterious about them; that they are simply transparent falsehoods.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Miracle, Lasts, Mysterious

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1900). “Miscellany”

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