“Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.”
Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist
A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)
“Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered and free than captive and comfortable.”
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American writer 1932Related quotes
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Baba (58)
Source: The Kite Runner (2003)
“Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s
Context: I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.
“Science had better not free the minds of men too much, before it has tamed their instincts.”
Jean Rostand (1894–1977) French writer
[Jean Rostand, The substance of men, Doubleday, 1962, 19]
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
Part V, The Merchant Princes, section 2; originally published as “The Big and the Little” in Astounding (August 1944)
The Foundation series (1951–1993), Foundation (1951)
Anne Applebaum (1964) journalist
Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine (2017) quoted at "Ukraine in the Flames of the 1917 Revolution" (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, September 13, 2017) https://huri.harvard.edu/news/ukraine-flames-1917-revolution
“Vengeance must end somewhere, and what better place to stop than at the prince?”
Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer
Source: 1960s, Julian (1964), Chapter 2