#falsehood

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#carelessness #falsehood #intentionally #lying #more

In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [...] There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful. And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them. It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood. ↗

— Sherwood Anderson

#grotesque #truth #truths #beauty

Tomorrow is an illusion suggesting that another chance always exists.  It is a dangerously false illusion. ↗

— Richelle E. Goodrich

#false #falsehood #illusion #opportunity #richelle

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always. ↗

— Walter Savage Landor

#argument #falsehood #finally #politics #prevails

The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#always #another #commonplaces #dictum #experience

The real loneliness is living among all these kind people who only ask one to pretend! ↗

— Edith Wharton

#family #friends #insincerity #kindness #loneliness

One of the reasons, surely, why women have been credited with less perfect veracity than men is that the burden of conventional falsehood falls chiefly on them. ↗

— Katharine Fullerton Gerould

#burden #chiefly #conventional #credited #falls

RUMOUR: "Upon my tongues continual slanders ride, The which in every language I pronounce, Stuffing the ears of men with false reports. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#gossip #libel #reputation #rumor #slander

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. ↗

— John F. Kennedy

#alien #american #american people #competitive #entrust