“The chances are telling the truth is what got him there”
Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).
Weekly columns
Context: See they conducted experiments on convicts... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there... It would be a big aid to humanity, but it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics … Even the ministers are denouncing it now … Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.
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Will Rogers 121
American humorist and entertainer 1879–1935Related quotes
“To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.”
First attributed to Roosevelt on the internet in recent years, there is no evidence he ever said this, as noted in "Teddy Roosevelt on Conservatives vs. Liberals", by Dan Evon at snopes.com (3 June 2016) http://www.snopes.com/teddy-roosevelt-anger-a-liberal-quote and at Teddy Roosevelt once said, “To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.” (14 June 2016) https://www.truthorfiction.com/teddy-roosevelt-anger-conservative-lie-quote
Misattributed
Concepts
Jan 2010, http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/jan/31/nigel-clough-billy-davies-assault-allegation
Billy seems to be using the expression "electric chair" when he means a lie detector.
Source: Necromancer (1962), Chapter 5 (p. 36)
“Always tell the truth, even if it should make him jump out of his shoe.”
Source: All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), 4. Viceroys without colonial aspirations? Jules Van Praet (1806-1887) http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#2.%20 He certainly did not play his role of chief of staff to the king as that of a submissive slave: this is apparent from a preserved quote from him in Bruges in which he was determined to be his king. VIAENE, V. “Leopold I, Belgian Diplomacy and the Culture of the European Concert, 1831-1865”, 130. Van Praet then rebelled against the fact that Leopold I had already had several mistresses there, which according to the private secretary was detrimental to the popularity of the monarchy.
“When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?”
“You got to be ready to die every day - then you got a chance.”
Source: Winter's Bone
