Falsehood Quotes - Page 16

• Indiscretion, rashness, falsehood, levity, and malice, produce each other.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Levity, Produce, Malice

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Who begins with severity, in judging of another, ends commonly with falsehood.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Judging, Ends, Severity

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• A wise man's kingdom is his own breast: or, if he ever looks farther, it will only be to the judgment of a select few, who are free from prejudices, and capable of examining his work. Nothing indeed can be a stronger presumption of falsehood than the approbation of the multitude; and Phocion, you know, always suspected himself of some blunder when he was attended with the applauses of the populace.

  David Hume

  Wise, Men, 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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• If I get clear of my debts, I care not though men call me bold, glib of tongue, audacious, impudent, shameless, a fabricator of falsehoods, inventor of words, practised in lawsuits, a pettifogger, a rattle, a fox, a sharper, a knave, a dissembler, a slippery fellow, an imposter, a rogue that deserves the cat-o-nine-tails, a blackguard, a twister, a licker-up of hashes; they call all this when they meet me, if they please, I care not.

  Aristophanes

  Cat, Men, Tails

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• For politicians truth and falsehood are unimportant. So I never could become a politician - not even a church politician.

  Martin Niemoller

  Church, Politician, Truth And Falsehood

  "Martin Niemöller, 1892-1984" by James Bentley, (p. 223), 1984.

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• We swear by the Quran and Sunnah, and we will not compromise with any infidel... Islam is the truth and all else is falsehood.

  Abu Bakar Bashir

  Islam, Quran, Compromise

  YouTube Channel "Al Jazeera English"/"101 East- Inside Indonesia's Islamic schools", www.youtube.com. August 31, 2007.

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• A single observation that is inconsistent with some generalization points to the falsehood of the generalization, and thereby 'points to itself'.

  Ian Hacking

  Observation, Inconsistent, Generalization

  Ian Hacking (2006). “The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference”, p.34, Cambridge University Press

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• Lying is sometimes acted, insinuated, or implied, in a manner as injurious and shameful as when the falsehood is spoken outright.

  Elias Lyman Magoon

  Lying, Sometimes, Shameful

  Elias Lyman Magoon (1849). “Proverbs for the people: or, Illustrations of practical godliness drawn from the Book of wisdom”, p.96

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• Every politician, every member of the clerical profession, ought to incur the reasonable suspicion of being an interested supporter of false doctrines, who becomes angry at opposition, and endeavors to cast an odium on free inquiry. Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

  Thomas Cooper

  Truth, Religion, Doctrine

  Thomas Cooper (1829). “Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy ...”, p.375

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• The absurdist is concerned with the search for meaning in the Universe. He believes this search to be meaningless--hence the disintegration of plot, character, and language in absurdist drama. Order is a falsehood that we, God, those who came before us, have imposed on a random universe. However, the absurdist is confronted with a curious paradox: though he believes the Universe to be meaningless, he cannot abandon the search for meaning--or he will die.

  Walter Wykes

  Drama, Believe, Character

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• To invent without scruple a new principle to every new phenomenon, instead of adapting it to the old; to overload our hypothesis with a variety of this kind, are certain proofs that none of these principles is the just one, and that we only desire, by a number of falsehoods, to cover our ignorance of the truth.

  David Hume

  Truth, Ignorance, Numbers

  David Hume (2003). “A Treatise of Human Nature”, p.201, Courier Corporation

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• The Fanaticism which discards the Scripture, under the pretense of resorting to immediate revelations is subversive of every principle of Christianity. For when they boast extravagantly of the Spirit, the tendency is always to bury the Word of God so they may make room for their own falsehoods.

  John Calvin

  Lying, Religion, May

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• I know how ingratitude burns, how falsehood tortures, for I have been deceived in friendship and in love; I have learned to lose and to resign myself.

  Franz Grillparzer

  Deception, Lost, Torture

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• If the twentieth century is to be better than the nineteenth, it will be because there are among us men who walk in Priestley's footsteps....To all eternity, the sum of truth and right will have been increased by their means; to all eternity, falsehoods and injustice will be the weaker because they have lived.

  Thomas Huxley

  Mean, Men, Injustice

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• Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth,
  And thus do we of wisdom and of reach,
  With windlasses and with assays of bias,
  By indirections find directions out.

  William Shakespeare

  Truth, Bait, Carp

  William Shakespeare, Ann Thompson, Neil Taylor (2006). “Hamlet: Third Series”, p.232, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me; no stifling dogma shall encramp my pen!

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Dogma, Stifling, Pens

  "The Satanic Bible". Book by Anton Szandor LaVey, 1969.

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• Language is a machine for making falsehoods.

  Iris Murdoch

  Inspirational, Machines, Language

  Iris Murdoch (1977). “Under the Net”, p.51, Penguin

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• Minds fettered by this doctrine no longer inquire concerning a proposition whether it is attested by sufficient evidence, but whether it accords with Scripture; they do not search for facts as such, but for facts that will bear out their doctrine. It is easy to see that this mental habit blunts not only the perception of truth, but the sense of truthfulness, and that the man whose faith drives him into fallacies treads close upon the precipice of falsehood.

  George Eliot

  Men, Perception, Mind

  George Eliot (2016). “The Essays of George Eliot: Top Novelist Focus”, p.45, 谷月社

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• In the ordinary, everyday understandings of the words involved, to say that someone survived death is to contradict yourself; while to assert that all of us live forever is to assert a manifest falsehood, the flat contrary of a universally known truth: namely, the truth that all human beings are mortal. For when, after some disaster, the 'dead' and the 'survivors' have both been listed, what logical space remains for a third category?

  Antony Flew

  Space, Forever, Understanding

  Antony Flew (2000). “Merely Mortal?: Can You Survive Your Own Death?”

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• I could dispense with nothing when I created the superman. His seed still carries all your evil and falsehood, your lies and yourignorance.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Lying, Evil, Stills

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• Christianity only hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother tells her falsehoods to her child, but, thank heaven, the child does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard for her to learn.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Mother, Dream, Song

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.71, Delphi Classics

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• The diagnosis of drunkenness was that it was a disease for which the patient was in no way responsible, that it was created by existing saloons, and non-existing bright hearths, smiling wives, pretty caps and aprons. The cure was the patent nostrum of pledge-signing, a lying-made-easy invention, which like calomel, seldom had any permanent effect on the disease for which it was given, and never failed to produce another and a worse. Here the care created an epidemic of forgery, falsehood and perjury.

  Jane Swisshelm

  Lying, Epidemics, Wife

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• Dissembling profiteth nothing; a feigned countenance, and slightly forged externally, deceiveth but very few.

  Seneca the Younger

  Countenance, Forged

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• Cottages have them (falsehood and dissimulation) as well as courts, only with worse manners.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Cottages, Manners, Court

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• All genuinely noble women prefer truth to falsehood. As the Russians with their Czar, they are unwilling to see their idol degraded; they want to be proud of the domination they accept.

  Honore de Balzac

  Idols, Noble, Want

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