Falsity Quotes

• False-dealing travels a short road, and surely detected.

  William Penn

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• So the false spider, when her nets are spread, deep ambushed in her silent den does lie.

  John Dryden

  Lying, Doe, Spiders

  John Dryden, Paul Hammond, David Hopkins (2007). “Dryden: Selected Poems”, p.96, Pearson Education

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• It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Truth, Freedom, Real

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• False as the adulterate promises of favorites in power when poor men court them.

  Thomas Otway

  Men, Promise, Poor

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• To be true is manly, chivalrous, Christian; to be false is mean, cowardly, devilish.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Christian, Mean, Being True

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• Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

  Heart, Men, Essence

  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1945). “Hegel's Philosophy of right”

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• People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

  Ken Kesey

  Retirement, People, Fabric

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• The consciousness of the falsity of present pleasures, and the ignorance of the vanity of absent pleasures, cause inconstancy.

  Blaise Pascal

  Ignorance, Vanity, Causes

  Blaise Pascal (2010). “Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works”, p.47, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Truths are immortal, my dear friend; they are immortal like God! What we call a falsity is like a fruit; it has a certain number of days; it is bound to decay. Whereas, what we call truth is like gold; days, months, even centuries can hide gold, can overlook it but they can never make it decay.

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Truth, Numbers, Gold

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• People don't want other people to be people.

  Gene Wolfe

  People, Getting High, Want

  "The Claw of the Conciliator". Book by Don Maitz and Gene Wolfe, March, 1981.

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• The greater absurdities are, the more strongly they evince the falsity of that supposition from whence they flow.

  Francis Atterbury

  Flow, Absurdity, Supposition

  Francis ATTERBURY (Bishop of Rochester.) (1740). “Sermons and Discourses on several Subjects and Occasions”, p.67

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• Falsity cannot keep an idea from being beautiful; there are certain errors of such ingenuity that one could regret their not ranking among the achievements of the human mind.

  Jean Rostand

  Beautiful, Regret, Mistake

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

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• Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

  Blaise Pascal

  Truth, Contradiction, Mathematics

  "Bare Facts and Naked Truths: A New Correspondence Theory of Truth". Book by George Englebretsen (p. 153), 2006.

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• Almost all political campaigns involve falsity and playacting.

  Rich Lowry

  Political, Campaigns, Political Campaign

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• I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Truth, Lying, Science

  "What is Art?". Book by Leo Tolstoy, Ch. 14, 1897.

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• It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity.

  Michael Servetus

  Devil, Christianity, Invention

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• Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

  William James

  Truth, Mean, Reality

  William James (2016). “William James: Essays and Lectures”, p.99, Routledge

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• The book which the reader now holds in his hands, from one end to the other, as a whole and in its details, whatever gaps, exceptions, or weaknesses it may contain, treats of the advance from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from falsity to truth, from darkness to daylight, from blind appetite to conscience, from decay to life, from bestiality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from limbo to God. Matter itself is the starting-point, and the point of arrival is the soul. Hydra at the beginning, an angel at the end.

  Victor Hugo

  Book, Angel, Hands

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• Don`t imitate: imitation creates falsity, pseudo-ness, inauthenticity. Just feel your own way and don`t bother about what others say. It is nobody else`s business. Don`t bother about what churches say, organizations say - listen to your own heart.

  Rajneesh

  Heart, Organization, Church

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• Those who desire to remain intoxicated by Reality do not require artificial intoxicants. Indulging in false things will only increase falsity, for every direction is indeed infinite. Those who desire the truly genuine Thing proceed of themselves with great intensity so as to progress in their sadhana.

  Anandamayi Ma

  Reality, Progress, Desire

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• The process [of mass-media deception] has to be conscious, or it would not be carried out with sufficient precision, but it also has to be unconscious, or it would bring with it a feeling of falsity and hence of guilt.... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies all this is indispensably necessary.

  George Orwell

  Truth, Lying, Believe

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• I think . . . that philosophy has the duty of pointing out the falsity of outworn religious ideas, however estimable they may be as a form of art. We cannot act as if all religion were poetry while the greater part of it still functions in its ancient guise of illicit science and backward morals. . . .

  Corliss Lamont

  Religious, Art, Philosophy

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• We do not wish incorrect and unsound doctrines to be handed down to posterity under the sanction of great names, to be received and valued by future generations as authentic and reliable, ... Errors in history and doctrine, if left uncorrected by us who are conversant with the events, and who are in a position to judge of the truth or falsity of the doctrines, would go to our children as though we had sanctioned and endorsed them.

  Brigham Young

  Children, Names, Errors

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• He (Mohammed) seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us. His teaching also contained precepts that were in conformity with his promises, and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected; he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine, he brought forward only such as could be grasped by the natural ability of anyone with a very modest wisdom. Indeed, the truths that he taught he mingled with many fables and with doctrines of the greatest falsity.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Teaching, Men, Religion Of Islam

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• To be inspired is to be moved in an extraordinary manner by the power or Spirit of God to act, speak, or think what is holy, justand true; [Enthusiasm is] A Full, but false persuasion in a man that he is inspired.

  Henry More

  Truth, Men, Thinking

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