A Question of Credibility

Sunday, March 31, 2019 – A Question of Credibility

To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. ~ Edward R. Murrow

The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition. ~ Neil Postman

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth, come only from the senses. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Governing today means giving acceptable signs of credibility. It is like advertising and it is the same effect that is achieved – commitment to a scenario. ~ Jean Baudrillard

For every credibility gap there is a gullibility gap. ~ Richard Cobden

Give a man a reputation as an early riser and he can sleep ’til noon. ~ Mark Twain

I want to leave behind me the name of a fellow who never bullied a little boy, or turned his back on a big one. ~ Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays

Character is much easier kept than recovered. ~ Thomas Paine

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. ~ Abraham Lincoln. Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854

Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The reputation of a man is like his shadow, gigantic when it precedes him and pigmy in its proportions when it follows. ~ Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

People crave trustworthy information about the world we live in. Some people want it because it is essential to the way they make a living. Some want it because they regard being well-informed as a condition of good citizenship. Some want it because they want something to exchange over dinner tables and water coolers. ~ Bill Keller

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Credibility is someone else’s idea of what I should be doing. ~ Paul Stanley

A lack of realism in the vision today costs credibility tomorrow. ~ John C. Maxwell

For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America. ~ George W. Bush

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place. ~ John F. Kennedy

What I’ve learned, and will try to remember from now on, is that defending your country’s credibility is never sufficient reason to fight a war. ~ Timothy Noah

One cannot fashion a credible deterrent out of an incredible action. ~ Robert McNamara

The habit of disguising ideology as expertise has created a deficit of legitimacy. ~ Paul Krugman

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. ~ Samuel Johnson

Power is actualized only when word and deed have not parted company. ~ Hannah Arendt

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. ~ H. L. Mencken

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self-interest backed by force. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The characteristic political attitude of today is not one of positive belief, but of despair. ~ Herbert Read

Expressive speech, with modulation in pitch and volume, and a minimum of noticeable pauses, boosts credibility and enhances the impression of intelligence. ~ Leonard Mlodinow

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest. ~ Mark Twain

I am different from George Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won’t. ~ Mark Twain

Well, I sort of don’t trust anybody who doesn’t like Led Zeppelin. ~ Jack White

You can’t believe everything people tell you – not even if those people are your own brain. ~ Jefferson Smith

All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust. ~ J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Optimism: the doctrine or belief that everything is beautiful, including what is ugly. ~ Ambrose Bierce

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief. ~ Immanuel Kant

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. ~ Bertrand Russell

All money is a matter of belief. ~ Adam Smith

Every man who attacks my belief, diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy. ~ Samuel Johnson

No one has the right to destroy another person’s belief by demanding empirical evidence. ~ Ann Landers

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. ~ David Hume

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to undervalue them. ~ Henry James

Need is not quite belief. ~ Anne Sexton

We are all tattooed in our cradles with the beliefs of our tribe; the record may seem superficial, but it is indelible. You cannot educate a man wholly out of the superstitious fears which were implanted in his imagination, no matter how utterly his reason may reject them. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Poet at the Breakfast Table, 1872

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right. ~ Laurens van der Post

Sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. ~ Lewis Carroll

They were so strong in their beliefs that there came a time when it hardly mattered what exactly those beliefs were; they all fused into a single stubbornness. ~ Louise Erdrich

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong. ~ Bertrand Russell