“When you understand persuasion … the truth is not as useful as it should be …”

—  Scott Adams

[Sam Harris vs. Scott Adams on Trump, YouTube, 19 July 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PAVMbuETnX0] (14:43 of 2:17:44)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "When you understand persuasion … the truth is not as useful as it should be …" by Scott Adams?
Scott Adams photo
Scott Adams 86
cartoonist, writer 1957

Related quotes

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay photo

“The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (1800–1859) British historian and Whig politician

On the Athenian Orators http://books.google.com/books?id=qb0OAAAAYAAJ&q="The+object+of+oratory+alone+is+not+truth+but+persuasion"&pg=PA135#v=onepage (August 1824)

Parmenides photo

“You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.”

Parmenides (-501–-470 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3; Simplicius, Commentary on the Heavens, 557-8; Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345

Edward R. Murrow photo
Parmenides photo
Edward R. Murrow photo

“To be persuasive, We must be believable,
To be believable, We must be credible,
To be credible, We must be truthful.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6
Context: American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.

Niccolo Machiavelli photo
John Ruskin photo

“He who has the truth at his heart need never fear the want of persuasion on his tongue.”

Volume III, chapter II, section 99.
The Stones of Venice (1853)
Source: The Stones of Venice: Volume I. The Foundations

John F. Kennedy photo

“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Commencement address, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (11 June 1962) http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/speeches/detail/3370
1962
Context: The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

Related topics