“The final revelation is that Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.”

The Decay of Lying (1889)

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Irish writer and poet 1854–1900

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“Basically I hate categorical labels. As a young artist I already was very clear about this — that 'objectification' is not the final aim of art. For there are greater things than the object. The greatest thing is the human mind.”

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“When both parties are lying and they both know the other party's lying, it comes powerful close to being the same thing as telling the truth.”

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Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Red Prophet (1988), Chapter 1.

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“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Source: Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest PHilosophers (1926), reprinted in Simon & Schuster/Pocket Books, 1991, ISBN 0-671-73916-6], Ch. II: Aristotle and Greek Science; part VI: Psychology and the Nature of Art: "Artistic creation, says Aristotle, springs from the formative impulse and the craving for emotional expression. Essentially the form of art is an imitation of reality; it holds the mirror up to nature. There is in man a pleasure in imitation, apparently missing in lower animals. Yet the aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance; for this, and not the external mannerism and detail, is their reality.

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“We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"In Front of Your Nose" http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/nose/english/e_nose, Tribune (22 March 1946)
Context: The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.

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