Half Truth Quotes - Page 3

• Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Dark, Men, Racism

  "Letter from a Birmingham Jail". www.africa.upenn.edu. April 16, 1963.

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• The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defense correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons.

  E. P. Thompson

  Truth, Political, Secret

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• It's no mystery why many of us in the media can't get enough of the fabricators Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass, the latter of whom concocted more than a score of bogus feature stories for the New Republic (and who wrote for other magazines, including this one, once) in the mid-1990s. Anyone--journalist, student, academic--who has ever stared at a blank screen, their brains grinding emptiness, and thought, How can I fill this hole? knows that in those desperate moments before a deadline, almost anyone can do almost anything: make stuff up, plagiarize, scribble senseless half-truths.

  David Edelstein

  Glasses, Media, Brain

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• Two half-truths do not make a truth, and two half- cultures do not make a culture

  Arthur Koestler

  Two, Culture, Half

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• Eradication of microbial disease is a will-o'-the-wisp; pursuing it leads into a morass of hazy biological concepts and half truths.

  Rene Dubos

  Half, Disease, Wisps

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• That 'change makes us uncomfortable' is now one of the most widely promoted, widely accepted, and under-considered half-truths around. [I]t is not change by itself that makes us uncomfortable; it is not even change that involves taking on something very difficult. Rather, it is change that leaves us feeling defenseless before the dangers we 'know' to be present that causes us anxiety.

  Robert Kegan

  Anxiety, Feelings, Half

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• To persuade thinking persons in Eastern Europe that Central American Marxists - the Sandinistas, the guerillas in El Salvador - are in absurd and tragic error is not difficult. Poles and Czechs and Hungarians can hardly believe, after what they experienced under socialism, that other human beings would fall for the same bundle of lies, half-truths, and distortions. Sadly, however, illusion is often sweeter to human taste than reality. The last marxist in the world will probably be an American nun.

  Michael Novak

  Lying, War, Fall

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• Guys, I don't want to tell you half-truths, unless they're completely accurate.

  Alain Vigneault

  Hockey, Nhl, Guy

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• Sweep up the debris of decaying faith;
  Sweep down the cobwebs of worn-out out beliefs,
  And throw your soul wide open to the light of reason and of knowledge.
  Be not afraid
  To thrust aside half-truths and grasp the whole.

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox

  Light, Soul, Cobwebs

  Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Progress”

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• Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.

  George R. R. Martin

  Lying, Half

  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.2190, Bantam

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• There is a terrible blindness in the love that wants only to accommodate. It's not only to do with omissions and half-truths. It implants a lack of being in the speaker and robs the self of an identity without which it is impossible for one to grow close to another.

  Alexander Theroux

  Omission, Self, Identity

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• As the places where Americans dwell become evermore depressing and impossible, Disneyworld is where they escape to worship the nation in the abstract, a cartoon capital of a cartoon republic enshrining the falsehoods, half-truths, and delusions that prop up the squishy thing the national character has become--for instance, that we are a nation of families; that we care about our fellow citizens; that history matters; that there is a place called home.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Depressing, Home, Character

  James Howard Kunstler (1993). “The geography of nowhere: the rise and decline of America's man-made landscape”

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• Lies and half-truths fall like snow, covering the things that I remember, the things I saw. A landscape, unrecognizable after a snowfall; that is that she has made of my life.

  Neil Gaiman

  Lying, Fall, Snow

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• It is notorious that we speak no more than half-truths in our ordinary conversation, and even a soliloquy is likely to be affected by the apprehension that walls have ears.

  Eric Linklater

  Wall, Ordinary, Ears

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• What will a Hillary Clinton presidency look like? The answer by now seems obvious: It will look like her presidential campaign, which in turn looks increasingly like the first Clinton presidency. Which is to say, high-minded ideals, lowered execution, half truths, outright lies (and imaginary flights), take-no prisoners politics, some very good policy ideas, a presidential spouse given to wallowing in anger and self-pity, and a succession of aides and surrogates pushed under the bus when things don't go right. Which is to say, often.

  Carl Bernstein

  Lying, Self, Ideas

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• In 2004, I wrote 'What We've Lost,' a book about the Bush administration. It sold only reasonably well, in part, I think, because the book was a horrific downer, an unrelenting account of the administration's actions, bungles, deceptions, half-truths, untruths, and downright corruptions.

  Graydon Carter

  Book, Thinking, Deception

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• The polls demonstrate that 50 percent of Americans who get their news from TV think Saddam Hussein was behind the Twin Towers attack. Man, have they got ways for getting half-truths out right away now, thanks to TV! I think TV is a calamity in a democracy.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Men, Thinking, Democracy

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. June 12, 2003.

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• There are always those who say legislation can't solve the problem. There is a half-truth involved here. It is true that legislation cannot solve the whole problem. It can solve some of the problem. It may be true that morality can't be legislated, but behavior can be regulated.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Half, May, Morality

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• We make no apology then for raising our voices loud to a world that is ripening in sin the lord has said,” Say nothing but repentance unto this generation; The adversary is subtle, cunning, he knows that he cannot induce good men and women immediately to do major evils so he moves slyly, whispering half truths until he has his intended victims following him finally he clamps his chains upon them and fetters them tight, and then he laughs at their discomfiture and their misery.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Moving, Apology, Men

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• The value of a work of art cannot ultimately turn on the more or less of its subservience to ideology; for painting can be grandly subservient to the half-truths of the moment, doggedly servile, and yet be no less intense.

  T. J. Clark

  Art, Half, Painting

  T. J. Clark (2015). “The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and His Followers”, p.78, Princeton University Press

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• Two half truths do not make a truth.

  Arthur Koestler

  Two, Half

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• It is important to communicate to children about what we are going through. We often speak in half truths. We don't frame the truth or explain our experience in terms they can understand. We need to take time to do this. What has to happen is that more people have to get involved with more children. Focus energy on the child. Children are raising themselves these days in all sorts of strange ways.

  James Redfield

  Children, People, Focus

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• At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Country, Art, Half

  Joyce Carol Oates' address to graduating class at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, May 28, 2006.

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• The ancient sages never put their teachings in a systematic form. They spoke in paradoxes, for they were afraid of uttering half-truths. They began by talking like fools and ended by making their hearers wise.

  Okakura Kakuzo

  Wise, Teaching, Talking

  Okakura Kakuzo (2012). “The Book of Tea: Classic Edition”, p.22, Tuttle Publishing

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• I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away.

  Sarah Dessen

  Doors, Secret, Half

  Sarah Dessen (2004). “Someone Like You”, p.53, Penguin

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