True And False Quotes

• True' and 'false' are the evasions of people who never want to arrive at a decision. Truth is something without end.

  Robert Musil

  People, Decision, Want

  Robert Musil (2015). “The Man Without Qualities: Picador Classic”, p.891, Pan Macmillan

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• The difference between true and false repentance lies in this: the man who truly repents cries out against his heart; but the other, as Eve, against the serpent, or something else.

  John Bunyan

  Lying, Heart, Men

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• Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

  Seneca the Younger

  Wise, Religious, Atheist

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• Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

  C. S. Lewis

  Faith, Religious, Catholic

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• True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Lying, Men

  Leviathan pt. 1, ch. 4 (1651)

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• He, who knows how to distinguish between true and false, must have an adequate idea of true and false.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Ideas, Adequate

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• True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Truth, Speech, Attributes

  Leviathan pt. 1, ch. 4 (1651)

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• We live in a world where unfortunately the distinction between true and false appears to become increasingly blurred by manipulation of facts, by exploitation of uncritical minds, and by the pollution of the language.

  Arne Tiselius

  Science, Mind, World

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• The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

  Hannah Arendt

  People, Fiction, Facts

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• You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity - and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies?

  Jiddu Krishnamurti

  Love, Life, Christian

  Jiddu Krishnamurti (1991). “The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti 1934-1935: What Is Right Action”, Editorial Kier

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• There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.

  Harold Pinter

  Real, True Or False, Literature

  Harold Pinter (2013). “Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics 1948-2008”, p.218, Faber & Faber

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• It is not easy to distinguish between true and false affection, unless there occur one of those crises in which, as gold is tried by fire, so a faithful friendship may be tested by danger.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Real, Fire, Faithful

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• Weeds grow sometimes very much like flowers, and you can't tell the difference between true and false merely by the shape.

  Edwin Paxton Hood

  Weed, Flower, Differences

  Edwin Paxton Hood (1885). “Bye-path Meadow”

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• When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy, True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Wish, Orthodoxy, Speak

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “George Bernard Shaw: Collected Articles, Lectures, Essays and Letters: Thoughts and Studies from the Renowned Dramaturge and Author of Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Pygmalion, Arms and The Man, Saint Joan, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion”, p.317, e-artnow

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• Indeed, what forces us at all to suppose that there is an essential opposition of 'true' and 'false'? Is it not sufficient to assume degrees of apparentness and, as it were, lighter and darker shadows and shades of appearance- different 'values', to use the language of painters?

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Shadow, Essentials, Degrees

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.236, Modern Library

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• Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the "latent spark" . . . If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?

  John Adams

  Passion, Differences, People

  John Adams, Daniel LEONARD, Jonathan SEWALL (1819). “Novanglus and Massachusettensis; or, political essays, published in ... 1774 and 1775, on the principal points of controversy, between Great Britain and her colonies; the former by John Adams ... the latter by Jonathan Sewall [or rather, Daniel Leonard] ... To which are added a number of letters lately written by President Adams to the Hon. William Tudor, etc”, p.11

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• We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Circles, Worry, Anxiety

  Ingmar Bergman (1956). “The seventh seal: a film”

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• The firmness with which the (American) people have withstood the... abuses of the press, the discernment they have manifested between truth and falsehood, show that they may safely be trusted to hear everything true and false and to form a correct judgment between them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  People, Abuse, May

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• Was there a little time between the invention of language and the coming of true and false?

  Mason Cooley

  Littles, Language, Invention

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• "Everything is already there in...." How does it come about that [an] arrow points? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? - "No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." - That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Arrows, Doe, Paper

  "Philosophical Investigations" by Ludwig Wittgenstein, (§ 454), 1953.

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• I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Reality, World, Backgrounds

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969). “On Certainty”

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• Whatever you believe to be true and false, that proclaim to be true and false; whatever you think admirable and beautiful, that should be your model, even if all your friends and all the critics storm at you as a crotchet-monger and an eccentric.

  George Henry Lewes

  Beautiful, Believe, Thinking

  George Henry Lewes (1891). “The Principles of Success in Literature”

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• My point taken further is that True and False (hence what we call "belief") play a poor, secondary role in human decisions; it is the payoff from the True and the False that dominates-and it is almost always asymmetric, with one consequence much bigger than the other, i.e., harboring positive and negative asymmetries (fragile or antifragile). Let me explain.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Taken, Play, Decision

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2012). “Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder”, p.259, Random House

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• A general in time of war is constantly bombarded by reports both true and false; by errors arising from fear or negligence or hastiness; by disobedience born of right or wrong interpretations, of ill will; of a proper or mistaken sense of duty; of laziness; or of exhaustion; and by accident that nobody could have foreseen. In short, he is exposed to countless impressions, most of them disturbing, few of them encouraging. ... If a man were to yield to these pressures, he would never complete an operation.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  War, Men, Errors

  Carl von Clausewitz (1989). “On War”, p.193, Princeton University Press

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• You often hear attacks on international adoption as robbing a child of his or her culture, and that's both true and false. It's true that an internationally adopted child loses the rich background of history and religion and culture and language that the child was born into, but the cruel fact is that most children don't have access to the local, beautiful culture within an orphanage.

  Melissa Fay Greene

  Beautiful, Children, Adoption

  Source: www.cnn.com

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