Untrue Quotes

• All your life people will tell you things. And most of the time, probably ninety-five percent of the time, what they'll tell you will be wrong.

  Michael Crichton

  Life, People, Ninety

  Michael Crichton (1997). “The Lost World”, Knopf

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• For some reason, we are truly convinced that if we criticize ourselves, the criticism will lead to change. If we are harsh, we believe we will end up being kind. If we shame ourselves, we believe we end up loving ourselves. It has never been true, not for a moment, that shame leads to love. Only love leads to love.

  Geneen Roth

  Love, Inspirational, Change

  FaceBook post by Geneen Roth from Apr 24, 2014

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• How do you untell something? You can't. You can't put words back in your mouth. What you can do, is spread false gossip ... so people think that everything that's been said is untrue. Include that Stanley is having an affair. It's like the end of Spartacus. I have seen the movie half a dozen times, and I still don't know who the real Spartacus is. And, that is what makes that movie a classic whodunnit.

  Michael Scott

  Real, Thinking, Gossip

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• Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the nature and direction of life.

  Rachel Carson

  Men, Focus, Shapes

  Preface to "Humane Biology Projects" by the Animal Welfare Institute, 1961.

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• The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what is untrue.

  Antisthenes

  Life, Wisdom, Truth

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• A lie cannot live.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Liars, Lying, Deception

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• People forget that stereotypes aren’t bad because they are always untrue. Stereotypes are bad because they are not always true. If we allow ourselves to judge another based on a stereotype, we have allowed a gross generalization to replace our own thinking.

  George Takei

  Thinking, People, Judging

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• We can't believe what we believe to be untrue, and we can't love what we believe to be unreal.

  Peter Kreeft

  Inspirational, Believe, Belief

  Peter Kreeft, Fr. Ronald Tacelli (2016). “Handbook of Catholic Apologetics: Reasoned Answers to Questions of Faith”, p.18, Ignatius Press

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• When men no longer have the least fear of saying something untrue, they very soon have no fear whatsoever of doing something unjust.

  Theodor Haecker

  Men, Unjust, No Fear

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• It is simply untrue that all our institutions are evil,... that all politicians are mere opportunists, that all aspects of university life are corrupt. Having discovered an illness, it's not terribly useful to prescribe death as a cure.

  George McGovern

  Death, Evil, Dying

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• When you're young you think that you're going to sail into a lovely lake of quietude and peace. This is profoundly untrue.

  Doris Lessing

  Thinking, Lakes, Lovely

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• Do not take the yardstick of your ignorance to measure what the ancients knew, and call everything which you do not know lies. Do not call things untrue because they are marvelous, but give them a fair consideration.

  Wendell Phillips

  Lying, Ignorance, Giving

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• In my first publication I might have claimed that I had come to the conclusion, as a result of serious study of the literature and deep thought, that valuable antibacterial substances were made by moulds and that I set out to investigate the problem. That would have been untrue and I preferred to tell the truth that penicillin started as a chance observation. My only merit is that I did not neglect the observation and that I pursued the subject as a bacteriologist. My publication in 1929 was the starting-point of the work of others who developed penicillin especially in the chemical field.

  Alexander Fleming

  Science, Discovery, Deep Thought

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• Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

  Oscar Wilde

  Beautiful, Art, Lying

  Oscar Wilde (2012). “The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde”, p.60, Courier Corporation

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• We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.

  George Orwell

  Believe, Facts, Shows

  After World War II; quoted in the London Financial Times, 13 May 2003.

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• Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What's happened to the world?" A great Shadow has departed," said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or like water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Laughter, Land, Water

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.640, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare me a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German, and Germany will declare that I am a Jew.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Spiritual, Successful

  Address to French Philosophical Society, Paris, 6 Apr. 1922

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• I think it is quite untrue that it is standard journalistic practice to name the interviewer when quoting from an interview.

  Fareed Zakaria

  Thinking, Practice, Names

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• Because they claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies, governments arrogate to themselves the right to pass off as mere abstract profit or loss the human unhappiness that their decisions provoke or their negligence permits. It is a duty of an international citizenship to always bring the testimony of people's suffering to the eyes and ears of governments, sufferings for which it's untrue that they are not responsible. The suffering of men must never be a mere silent residue of policy. It grounds an absolute right to stand up and speak to those who hold power.

  Michel Foucault

  Eye, Loss, Men

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• After the temper subsides and one has a moment to calmly reflect, it isn't uncommon for declarations shouted in a fit of rage to strike one as untrue, and because they may have been hurtful to family, friends, lovers, husbands, or wives, one wishes them unsaid.

  Frank Beddor

  Love, Husband, Wife

  Frank Beddor (2006). “The Looking Glass Wars”, Dial Books for Young Readers

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• The cliche of the nerdy kid who doesn't go outside and just plays games is completely untrue. And it's also true for the nerdy kid who studies comic books and turns into this genius, and it is also true for the nerdy kid who listens to every nerdy thing that Led Zeppelin put out. That kind of obsession in a 16-year-old is not ugly. It's beautiful.

  Penn Jillette

  Beautiful, Book, Kids

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

  William James

  Truth, Opposites, Would Be

  William James (2007). “The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy”, p.217, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I will say again that I have never, and would never, harm a child. It sickens me that people have written untrue things about me.

  Michael Jackson

  Children, People, Unfaithful

  "Sources: Jackson accuser appeared on documentary", www.cnn.com. November 24, 2003.

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• While it is entirely untrue that Canadians lack a sense of humour, the funniest ones tend to head south: Dan Aykroyd, Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox.

  Simon Hoggart

  Foxes, Michael J Fox, Humour

  "This is a job for super-wonk" by Simon Hoggart, www.theguardian.com. February 7, 2013.

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• I would go to the office to visit my father [Pablo Escobar] and regardless of who he was meeting, he would drop everything to receive me in his office. In the series, the priorities that my father demonstrates are completely inverted and untrue.

  Juan Pablo Escobar

  Father, Office, Priorities

  Source: harvardpolitics.com

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