Truth And Falsehood Quotes - Page 3

• This (functional - E.W.) language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.

  Herbert Marcuse

  Reflection, Vocabulary, Doe

  Herbert Marcuse (2013). “One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society”, p.106, Routledge

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• It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Office, Abuse, Lines

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.463

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• the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on. We must correct their evidence by reason, and by considerations, derived from the nature of the medium, the distance of the object, and the disposition of the organ, in order to render them, within their sphere, the proper criteria of truth and falsehood.

  David Hume

  Distance, Order, Spheres

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.1058, Delphi Classics

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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, Unimportant

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

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• Good and evil are essential differences of the act of the will. For good and evil pertain essentially to the will; just as truth and falsehood pertain to the reason, the act of which is distinguished essentially by the difference of truth and falsehood (according as we say that an opinion is true or false.) Consequently, good and evil volition are acts differing in species.

  Thomas Aquinas

  Differences, Evil, True Or False

  Thomas Aquinas, Anton C. Pegis (1997). “Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, Volume 2”, p.335, Hackett Publishing

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• Reason, in a strict sense, as meaning the judgment of truth and falsehood, can never, of itself, be any motive to the will, and can have no influence but so far as it touches some passion or affection. Abstract relations of ideas are the object of curiosity, not of volition. And matters of fact, where they are neither good nor evil, where they neither excite desire nor aversion, are totally indifferent, and whether known or unknown, whether mistaken or rightly apprehended, cannot be regarded as any motive to action.

  David Hume

  Truth, Passion, Ideas

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.24, Oxford University Press

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• Philosophers talk about truth and falsehood. People in life talk about payoff, exposure, and consequences (risks and rewards), hence fragility and antifragility. And sometimes philosophers and thinkers and those who study conflate Truth with risks and rewards.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  People, Risk, Fragility

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2016). “Incerto 4-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness The Black Swan The Bed of Procrustes Antifragile”, p.347, Random House

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• Let her (Truth) and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

  John Milton

  Truth, Encounters, Falsehood

  Areopagitica (1644) See OliverWendell Holmes, Jr. 28

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• Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.

  John Donne

  Littles, Twins, Elders

  John Donne, Izaak Walton (1855). “The Poetical Works of Dr. John Donne: With a Memoir”, p.411

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• I conclude that, while it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

  Bertrand Russell

  Lying, Knowledge, Science

  Bertrand Russell (1997). “Religion and Science”, p.243, Oxford University Press, USA

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• There is truth and falsehood in a comma.

  Tom Stoppard

  Truth, Falsehood

  Tom Stoppard (2013). “The Invention of Love”, p.35, Faber & Faber

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• Animals have this way of constantly confronting us with ultimate questions - about truth and falsehood, guilt and innocence, God and sanctity and the soul - forcing us to define ourselves and our relationship to the world.

  Matthew Scully

  Animal, Soul, Guilt

  Matthew Scully (2003). “Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy”, p.305, Macmillan

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• There has been a controversy started of late, much better worth examination, concerning the general foundation of Morals; whether they be derived from Reason, or from Sentiment; whether we attain the knowledge of them by a chain of argument and induction, or by an immediate feeling and finer internal sense; whether, like all sound judgement of truth and falsehood, they should be the same to every rational intelligent being; or whether, like the perception of beauty and deformity, they be founded entirely on the particular fabric and constitution of the human species.

  David Hume

  Intelligent, Perception Of Beauty, Judgement

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• In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.

  G. I. Gurdjieff

  Lying, Men, Order

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• A scholar's business is to add to what is known. That is all. But it is capable of giving the very greatest satisfaction, because knowledge is good. It does not have to look good or even sound good or even do good. It is good just by being knowledge. And the only thing that makes it knowledge is that it is true. You can't have too much of it and there is no little too little to be worth having. There is truth and falsehood in a comma.

  Tom Stoppard

  Giving, Sound, Doe

  Tom Stoppard (2014). “The Invention of Love”, p.27, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Come! let us take a moment's shelter under some roof
  Look! there - before you, a little way off
  There is an empty space
  Between truth and falsehood.

  Amrita Pritam

  Space, Looks, Shelter

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• Belief is with them mechanical, voluntary: they believe what they are paid for - they swear to that which turns to account. Do you suppose, that after years spent in this manner, they have any feeling left answering to the difference between truth and falsehood?

  William Hazlitt

  Believe, Media, Years

  William Hazlitt, James Thornton (1967). “Miscellaneous writings”

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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, True And False

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

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• It is a dangerous and fateful presumption, besides the absurd temerity that it implies, to disdain what we do not comprehend. For after you have established, according to your fine undertstanding, the limits of truth and falsehood, and it turns out that you must necessarily believe things even stranger than those you deny, you are obliged from then on to abandon these limits.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Believe, Limits, Stranger

  Michel de Montaigne (1958). “Complete Essays”, p.134, Stanford University Press

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• Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.

  C. S. Lewis

  Truth Is, Norm, Falsehood

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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