Sunday, June 11, 2017 – To Tell the Truth
The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. ~ Winston Churchill
Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack. ~ Sun Tzu
Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli
It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But the half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor. ~ Neil Gaiman
Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit. ~ Edward R. Murrow
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil. ~ Alfred North Whitehead
What a man believes upon grossly insufficient evidence is an index into his desires – desires of which he himself is often unconscious. If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way. ~ Bertrand Russell
The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. ~ Gloria Steinem
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters. ~ Albert Einstein
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin’ away. ~ Elvis Presley
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. ~ Wallace Stevens
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood. ~ William Shenstone
Truth disappears with the telling of it. ~ Lawrence Durrell
There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can’t tell the truth without lying. ~ Josh Billings
To kill an error is as good a service as, and sometimes even better than, the establishing of a new truth or fact. ~ Charles Darwin
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. ~ Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
Unity without verity is no better than conspiracy. ~ John Trapp
Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion – and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion – while Truth again reverts to a new minority. ~ Soren Kierkegaard
If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. ~ Mark Twain
There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find. ~ Michael Friedlander
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. ~ Umberto Eco
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. ~ Winston Churchill
It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~ H. L. Mencken
Reality is bad enough. Why should I tell the truth? ~ Patrick Sky
It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar. ~ Jerome K. Jerome
Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one’s own habits, and from time to time, one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase – some jackboot, Achilles’ heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno or other lump of verbal refuse – into the dustbin where it belongs. ~ George Orwell
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches is never sure. ~ Segal’s Law
There used to be a real me, but I had it surgically removed. ~ Peter Sellers
You always admire what you really don’t understand. ~ Blaise Pascal
Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides. ~ Antonio Porchia
The truth is more important than the facts. ~ Frank Lloyd Wright
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. ~ Niels Bohr
Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread. ~ Josh Billings
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously. ~ Thomas Sowell
People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. ~ Richard J. Needham
If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships. ~ Bertrand Russell
No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see. ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
There’s one way to find out if a man is honest. Ask him. If he says, “Yes,” you know he is a crook. ~ Groucho Marx
Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. ~ Samuel Johnson
Solitaire is the only thing in life that demands absolute honesty. ~ Hugh Wheeler
Men are able to trust one another, knowing the exact degree of dishonesty they are entitled to expect. ~ Stephen Butler Leacock
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation. ~ Charles Baudelaire
It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. ~ Noel Coward
I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and to incur my own abhorrence. ~ Frederick Douglass
The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain, is to know how to face ridicule. ~ Miguel de Unamuno
Reason is the test of ridicule, not ridicule the test of truth. ~ William Warburton
Mockery is the weapon of those who have no other. ~ Hubert Pierlot
Under democracy one party always devotes its chief energies to trying to prove that the other party is unfit to rule – and both commonly succeed, and are right. ~ H. L. Mencken
Take our politicians: they’re a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of clichés the first prize. ~ Saul Bellow
Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country – and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians. ~ Charles Krauthammer
The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time. ~ Franklin P. Adams
It is my settled opinion, after some years as a political correspondent, that no one is attracted to a political career in the first place unless he is socially or emotionally crippled. ~ F. F. Bosworth
Politics, like theater, is one of those things where you’ve got to be wise enough to know when to leave. ~ Richard Lamm
Just Above Sunset 