
“Which is better, truth that is a lie or the lie that is truth?”
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?”
Source: The Judges
" The Grandmother http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/Alfred_Lord_Tennyson/14415", st. 8 (1864)
Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
“A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.”
Essay on Freud (16 May 1929)
“In the lie of truth lies the truth.”
“Truth and Lie,” p. 66
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”
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.”
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
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)
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