Judging the Truth

Sunday, April 22, 2018 – Judging the Truth

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

A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody. ~ Thomas Paine

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

Credibility comes from results. Everything else is just marketing. ~ Richie Norton

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

Trust me. I’m like a smart person. ~ Donald J. Trump

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

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

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, “Seek simplicity and distrust it.” ~ Alfred North Whitehead

A man trusts another man when he sees enough of himself in him. ~ Gregory David Roberts

I trust everyone. I just don’t trust the devil inside them. ~ Troy Kennedy Martin

Trust is always a good idea. For someone else. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

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

To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved. ~ George MacDonald

I would rather trust a woman’s instinct than a man’s reason. ~ Stanley Baldwin

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence hum absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week. ~ George Bernard Shaw

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

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

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

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

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it; for, however absurd it may be thought to boast an honor by an act which shows that it was conferred without merit, yet most men seem rather inclined to confess the want of virtue than of importance. ~ Samuel Johnson

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

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety. ~ Isaac Asimov

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

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

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

The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

It is difficult to make a reputation, but is even more difficult seriously to mar a reputation once properly made, so faithful is the public. ~ Arnold Bennett

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

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation. ~ Oscar Wilde

Consultants have credibility because they are not dumb enough to work at your company. ~ Scott Adams

Every writer knows he is spurious; every fiction writer would rather be credible than authentic. ~ John le Carre

The accumulation of birthdays is the leading cause of death in the United States and other large land masses. Now while that may not be 100% accurate, it is at least 88% accurate. Actually, the last sentence itself might not have been 100% accurate, but I’m 88% sure it was. Maybe I should just brush up on fractions and percentages before making statements that are liable to hurt the funeral industry, because if birthdays aren’t killing people then it’s bad for the mortality business. And if you can’t trust somebody to die, then you can’t trust somebody. But I’m somebody you can trust. I’m at least 88% trustworthy, at least 88% of the time. ~ Jarod Kintz

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

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