“The same principle that forbids me to lie does not allow me to tell the truth.”

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The same principle that forbids me to lie does not allow me to tell the truth." by Giacomo Casanova?

Giacomo Casanova55

Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice 1725–1798

Related quotes

“don't say it. don't tell me that nobody's going to stare at me, because they will. don't tell me it doesn't matter, because it does. and don't tell me i look fine because that's a lie.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

“And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Source: Light in August

“Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all.”

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist

Variant: A sign is anything that can be used to tell a lie.
Source: Trattato di semiotica generale (1975); [A Theory of Semiotics] (1976)

“Let me tell you the truth. The truth is what is, and what should be is a fantasy. A terrible, terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

as quoted by Paul Krassner in Lenny Bruce: Swear to tell the truth 1998 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0175844/

“They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth?”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), II
Context: Yes, I dreamed a dream, my dream of the third of November. They tease me now, telling me it was only a dream. But does it matter whether it was a dream or reality, if the dream made known to me the truth? If once one has recognized the truth and seen it, you know that it is the truth and that there is no other and there cannot be, whether you are asleep or awake. Let it be a dream, so be it, but that real life of which you make so much I had meant to extinguish by suicide, and my dream, my dream — oh, it revealed to me a different life, renewed, grand and full of power!