Falsehood Quotes - Page 21

• We never deceive people to benefit them, for knavery is a compound of wickedness and falsehood.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  People, Deception, Knavery

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• not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest.

  John Dryden

  Judging, Interest, Settings

  Plutarch, John Dryden (1859). “Plutarch's Lives”, p.110

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• There are some disguised falsehoods so like truths, that 'twould be to judge ill not to be deceived by them.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Lying, Judging, Deceived

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• I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Memories, Lying, Worst Enemy

  Abraham Lincoln (2012). “The Complete Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln (Biographically Annotated Edition)”, p.221, Jazzybee Verlag

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• The mind, conscious of rectitude, laughed to scorn the falsehood of report.

  Ovid

  Mind, Conscious, Rectitude

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• There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Truth, Humble, Light

  Leonardo da Vinci (2017). “Thoughts on art and life”, p.18, Youcanprint

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• Politeness only teaches us to save others from unnecessary pain.... You are not bound by politeness to tell any falsehoods.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Pain, Unnecessary, Teach

  Maria Edgeworth, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1825). “Works of Maria Edgeworth: Modern Griselda. Moral tales. 1825”, p.83

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• Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Over You, Watches, Looks

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (2015). “The Brothers Karamazov”, p.87, First Avenue Editions

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• That public men publish falsehoods Is nothing new. That America must accept Like the historical republics corruption and empire Has been known for years. Be angry at the sun for setting If these things anger you.

  Robinson Jeffers

  Men, America, Years

  Robinson Jeffers, Tim Hunt (1988). “The Collected Poetry of Robinson Jeffers: 1938-1962”, p.24, Stanford University Press

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• Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Truth Is, Can Not

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2691, Delphi Classics

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• Knowledge is a continuous fabric, in which ideas are connected to other ideas. Reason-free zones, in which people can assert arbitrary beliefs safe from ordinary standards of evaluation, can only corrupt this fabric, just as a contradiction can corrupt a system of logic, allowing falsehoods to proliferate through it.

  Steven Pinker

  Ideas, People, Ordinary

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• ..the real world's all we've got. Believers in the supernatural claim to have special wisdom about the world. But real wisdom means knowing truth from falsehood, knowing the difference between evidence and wishful thinking. Yes, the real world is mysterious and sometimes frightening. But would the supernatural make it better? The real world has beauty, poetry, love and the joy of honest discovery. Isn't that enough?

  John Stossel

  Real, Mean, Thinking

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• It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error. It is better to speak the truth that hurts and then heals, than falsehood that comforts and then kills. It is better to be hated for telling the truth than to be loved for telling a lie. It is better to stand alone with the truth, than to be wrong with a multitude. It is better to ultimately succeed with the truth than to temporarily succeed with a lie. There is only one Gospel.

  Adrian Rogers

  Hurt, Lying, Errors

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• Politicians nowadays treat Americans like medical orderlies treat Alzheimer's patients, telling them anything that will keep them subdued. It doesn't matter what untruths the people are fed because they will not long remember. But in politics, forgotten falsehoods almost guarantee new treachery.

  James Bovard

  Alzheimer's, Long, People

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• Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

  Samuel Johnson

  Examination, Fraud, Dread

  Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy, 1831.

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• In the long run, the most unpleasant truth is a safer companion than a pleasant falsehood.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Running, Long, Truth Is

  Theodore Roosevelt (2016). “Theodore Roosevelt's Words of Wit and Wisdom”, p.16, Chartwell

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• Organized religion, being founded on superstition, is, perforce, not scientific. And all that which is not scientific - that is, truthful - must be bolstered up by force, fear and falsehood. Thus we always find slavery and organized religion going hand in hand.

  Elbert Hubbard

  Hands, Atheism, Slavery

  Elbert Hubbard (1922). “Selected Writings of Elbert Hubbard ...”

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• It is evident, indeed, that such a doctrine, taken by itself in a literal manner, had no future. The world, in continuing to exist, caused it to crumble. One generation of man at the most was the limit of its endurance. The faith of the first Christian generation is intelligible, but the faith of the second generation is no longer so. After the death of John, or of the last survivor, whoever he might be, of the group which had seen the master, the word of Jesus was convicted of falsehood.

  Ernest Renan

  Christian, Jesus, Taken

  Ernest Renan (2015). “The Life of Jesus: Works of Renan”, 谷月社

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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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• Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it, so that when men come to be undeceived, it is too late; the jest is over, and the tale hath had its effect.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Too Late, Limping

  Jonathan Swift, John Hawkesworth (1784). “The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin: Including the Whole of His Posthumous Pieces, Letters, &c”, p.15

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• Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Truth, Turns, Rebuke

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.247, Courier Corporation

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• Better is the wrong with sincerity, rather than the right with falsehood.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Sincerity

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1846). “Proverbial Philosophy: A Book of Thoughts and Arguments, Originally Treated”, p.147

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• You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Weed, Truth, Animal

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• But if the gods do not exist at all - then we are lost,' I said. On the contrary - we are found!' said Aesop. But when we are afraid, who can we turn to, if not the gods?' Ourselves. We turn to ourselves anyway. We only pretend there are gods and that they care about us. It is a comforting falsehood.

  Erica Jong

  Atheist, Comforting, Atheism

  Erica Jong (2013). “Sappho's Leap: A Novel”, p.266, Open Road Media

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• Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood.

  William Shakespeare

  Witty, Memorable, Should

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