“Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
Source: The Judges
Review of Selected Essays by Simone Weil, The New York Review of Books (1 February 1963)
Context: The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.
“Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?”
Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor
Source: The Judges
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
" The Grandmother http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Alfred_Lord_Tennyson/14415", st. 8 (1864)
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
“A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate
Essay on Freud (16 May 1929)
“In the lie of truth lies the truth.”
Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman
“Truth and Lie,” p. 66
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) German philosopher
Source: The Way Towards The Blessed Life or the Doctrine of Religion 1806, P. 26-27
“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
Albert Camus (1913–1960) French author and journalist
Pablo Picasso said something very similar. Perhaps it is the source? From Herschel B. Chipp’s Theories of Modern Art: "We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand."
Disputed
Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716) German mathematician and philosopher
Il y a aussi deux sortes de vérités, celles de Raisonnement et celle de Fait. Les vérités de Raisonnement sont nécessaires et leur opposé est impossible, et celles de Fait sont contingentes et leur opposé est possible.
La monadologie (33).
The Monadology (1714)
Niels Bohr (1885–1962) Danish physicist
As quoted by his son Hans Bohr in "My Father", published in Niels Bohr: His Life and Work (1967), p. 328
Unsourced variant: The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
As quoted in Max Delbrück, Mind from Matter: An Essay on Evolutionary Epistemology, (1986) p. 167. It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth