Quotes about lies (1932 quotes, page 16)

“For their doctrine is this: That bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not permanent; but that the souls are immortal, and continue forever; and that they come out of the most subtile air, and are united to their bodies as to prisons, into which they are drawn by a certain natural enticement; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward. And this is like the opinions of the Greeks, that good souls have their habitations beyond the ocean, in a region that is neither oppressed with storms of rain or snow, or with intense heat, but that this place is such as is refreshed by the gentle breathing of a west wind, that is perpetually blowing from the ocean; while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never-ceasing punishments. And indeed the Greeks seem to me to have followed the same notion, when they allot the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they call heroes and demi-gods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly, in Hades, where their fables relate that certain persons, such as Sisyphus, and Tantalus, and Ixion, and Tityus, are punished; which is built on this first supposition, that souls are immortal; and thence are those exhortations to virtue and dehortations from wickedness collected; whereby good men are bettered in the conduct of their life by the hope they have of reward after their death; and whereby the vehement inclinations of bad men to vice are restrained, by the fear and expectation they are in, that although they should lie concealed in this life, they should suffer immortal punishment after their death. These are the Divine doctrines of the Essens about the soul, which lay an unavoidable bait for such as have once had a taste of their philosophy.”

Josephus on the Essenes

Jewish War

Life , Death , Men , God

“We do only three things in life: we sit, we stand, we lie horizontal. The rest is just a story.”

Byron Katie (1942) American spiritual writer

Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life (2002)

Life

“A stupid lie is one that can never make itself believed.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Stupidity

“What [is] the prevailing attitude today among those who call themselves religious but vigorously advocate tolerance? There are three main options, ranging from the disingenuous Machiavellian--1. As a matter of political strategy, the time is not ripe for candid declarations of religious superiority, so we should temporize and let sleeping dogs lie in hopes that those of other faiths can gently be brought around over the centuries.--through truly tolerant Eisenhowerian "Our government makes no sense unless it is founded on a deeply religious belief — and I don't care what it is" --2. It really doesn't matter which religion you swear allegiance to, as long as you have some religion.--to the even milder Moynihanian benign neglect--3. Religion is just too dear to too many to think of discarding, even though it really doesn't do any good and is simply an empty historical legacy we can afford to maintain until it quietly extinguishes itself sometime in the distant and unforeseeable future.It it no use asking people which they choose, since both extremes are so undiplomatic we can predict in advance that most people will go for some version of ecumenical tolerance whether they believe it or not. …We've got ourselves caught in a hypocrisy trap, and there is no clear path out. Are we like families in which the adults go through all the motions of believing in Santa Claus for the sake of the kids, and the kids all pretend still to believe in Santa Claus so as not to spoil the adults' fun? If only our current predicament were as innocuous and even comical as that! In the adult world of religion, people are dying and killing, with the moderates cowed into silence by the intransigence of the radicals in their own faiths, and many afraid to acknowledge what they actually believe for fear of breaking Granny's heart, or offending their neighbors to the point of getting run out of town, or worse.If this is the precious meaning our lives are vouchsafed thanks to our allegiance to one religion or another, it is not such a bargain, in my opinion. Is this the best we can do? Is it not tragic that so many people around the world find themselves enlisted against their will in a conspiracy of silence, either because they secretly believe that most of the world's population is wasting their lives in delusion (but they are too tenderhearted — or devious — to say so), or because they secretly believe that their own tradition is just such a delusion (but they fear for their own safety if they admit it)?”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

People , World , Fear , Family

“To turn your face from clear proofs of deceit,
To drink poison as if it were a soothing liquor,
To disregard gain and delight in being injured.
To believe that heaven can lie contained in hell;
To devote your life and soul to being disillusioned;
This is love; whoever has tasted it, knows.”

Lope De Vega Desmayarse

Huir el rostro al claro desengaño,
beber veneno por licor süave,
olvidar el provecho, amar el daño;
creer que un cielo en un infierno cabe,
dar la vida y el alma a un desengaño;
esto es amor. Quien lo probó lo sabe.
Sonnet, "Desmayarse, atreverse, estar furioso", line 9, from Rimas (1602); cited from José Manuel Blecua (ed.) Lírica (Madrid: Clásicos Castalia, [1981] 1999) p. 136. Translation from Eugenio Florit (ed.) Introduction to Spanish Poetry (New York: Dover, [1964] 1991) p. 65.

Love , Life , Soul , Hell

“Night by night I will lie down and sleep in the thought of God, and in the thought, too, that my waking may be in the bosom of the Father; and some time it will be, so I trust.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 406.

God , Sleep , Time , Night

“Late at night the horses stumble
Around the camp and I awake.
I lie on my elbow watching
Your beautiful sleeping face
Like a jewel in the moonlight.
If you are lucky and the
Nations let you, you will live
Far into the twenty-first
Century. I pick up the glass
And watch the Great Nebula
Of Andromeda swim like
A phosphorescent amoeba
Slowly around the Pole. Far
Away in distant cities
Fat-hearted men are planning
To murder you while you sleep.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

In Defense of the Earth (1956), The Great Nebula of Andromeda

Men , Beauty , Sleep , Distant

“The audacity of the man would have seemed sublime if she had felt sure that he knew the difference between good and evil, between a lie and the truth; but the more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee assessing Senator Silas P. Ratcliffe in Ch. XIII
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

Truth , Courage , Sense , Evil

“What’s happened, though, the ACLU wants teachers to believe they cannot teach Creation in the public schools. That just is a lie. By the way, in case you don’t know, ACLU stands for the America Communist Lawyers Union. The stated purpose of the founder was to advance communism. That’s the purpose of the ACLU. Now maybe all the lawyers involved don’t know that. But that is the stated purpose of that organization. They want to advance communism around the world.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Creation seminars (2003-2005), The Age of the Earth

World , School , Way , Communication

“The causes of violence lie in our basic values and the way in which we bring up our children and youth.”

James W. Prescott (1930) American psychologist

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" (1975)

Children , Youth , Way

“The primordial forms of all sciences, taken back beyond the rise of writing, lie ultimately in the magic of prehistory. Just as modern man wants to indicate what consequences his actions will have, so also a man who grows up in the magical way of life seeks to find a ground for everything and to find consequences of his action. Magic as a more or less clearly formulated system of tenets shot through with emotional elements, can become independent only when magicians, acting as specialists, proclaim the consequences of certain customs, either esoterically,. e. g. at certain rituals, or exoterically as popular education. The magicians tell what cases are to count as 'equal', and when certain measures shall be used”

Otto Neurath (1882–1945) austrian economist, philosopher and sociologist

if we think them ineffective, we call them ceremonies
Source: 1930s, "Empirical Sociology" (1931), p. 319

Life , Education , Way , Thinking

“I am an unrepentant book lover, and so soaked am I in the love of books that I feel – poor twentieth-century shopkeeper that I am – I feel that Pliny is a man I know, for all the eighteen centuries and more that lie between us. Pliny used to say (you will see it in a translation I have on my shelves) that no book was so bad that some good might be got out of it, and that is my feeling. I – and Pliny – born and bred so differently, feel the same about books and it gives me a flattering sense of rightness – sitting here in this shop among books that Pliny could not have imagined – books written in a language which was not then evolved – the thought makes me feel thrilled. There is no other word for it, but I dare not tell it to anyone. It is an astonishing secret to me that I must enjoy alone.”

William Darling (politician) (1885–1962) Scottish politician

Source: The Bankrupt Bookseller (1947), p. 30

Love , Secret , Books , Feeling

“You lie—under a mistake,
For this is the most civil sort of lie
That can be given to a man's face. I now
Say what I think.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Translation of Calderon's Magico Prodigioso, Scene i; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Thinking

“I believe that the Durbar, more than any event in modern history, showed to the Indian people the path which, under the guidance of Providence, they are treading, taught the Indian Empire its unity, and impressed the world with its moral as well as material force. It will not be forgotten. The sound of the trumpets has already died away; the captains and the kings have departed; but the effect produced by this overwhelmingly display of unity and patriotism is still alive and will not perish. Everywhere it is known that upon the throne of the East is seated a power that has made of the sentiments, the aspirations, and the interests of 300 millions of Asiatics a living thing, and the units in that great aggregation have learned that in their incorporation lies their strength. As a disinterested spectator of the Durbar remarked, Not until to-day did I realise that the destinies of the East still lie, as they always have done, in the hollow of India’s hand. I think, too, that the Durbar taught the lesson not only of power but of duty. There was not an officer of Government there present, there was not a Ruling Prince nor a thoughtful spectator, who must not at one moment or other have felt that participation in so great a conception carried with it responsibility as well as pride, and that he owed something in return for whatever of dignity or security or opportunity the Empire had given him.”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Budget Speech (25 March 1903), quoted in Lord Curzon in India, Being A Selection from His Speeches as Viceroy & Governor-General of India 1898-1905 (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 308-309.

People , World , History , Thinking

“I can at least comfort myself with the idea that whatever I’ve done I’ve helped to nail a lie, and I’m coming to think that lying is among the worst of all human failings. Next to actual killing. And experience has made us almost equally good at both of them.”
“I have killed many people and seen many more killed on my orders,” Jogajong said. “It is what must be paid to buy what we want.”

John Brunner book Stand on Zanzibar

“What we’ve been told we want, by liars more skilled than ourselves.”
continuity (37) “Storage”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

People , Lying , Idea , Thinking

“Afterwards I learned, that the best way to manage some kinds of painful thoughts, is to dare them to do their worst; to let them lie and gnaw at your heart till they are tired; and you find you still have a residue of life they cannot kill.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Phantastes (1858)

Life , Pain , Way , Learning

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Children , Age , World , Art

“… confess now- could you lie with the wife of your friend? could you debauch his sister? could you defraud a poor creditor? could you by gambling rejoice in the outwitting a novice of all his possessions?- No! why then thou art a silly fellow, incumbered with three abominable inmates; to wit- Conscience, Honesty, and Good-nature”

Ignatius Sancho (1729–1780) British composer, writer and grocer

(from vol 2, letter 43: 17 Oct 1779, to Mr M___ ).

Art , Nature , Sister

“It's a lie. I agree with the military experts who say it's a quagmire.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

On the Iraq War. Rebecca Traister. Enough with the vaginas! Salon, 15 September 2004 http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2004/09/15/ensler

“The world is full of signals that we don't perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us. […] What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But “parahuman” powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Natural Attraction: Bacteria, the Birds, and the Bees", p. 313
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

World , Nature , Bird , Bee

“The progress of science requires more than new data; it needs novel frameworks and contexts. And where do these fundamentally new views of the world arise? They are not simply discovered by pure observation; they require new modes of thought. And where can we find them, if old modes do not even include the right metaphors? The nature of true genius must lie in the elusive capacity to construct these new modes from apparent darkness. The basic chanciness and unpredictability of science must also reside in the inherent difficulty of such a task.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Flamingo's Smile

"False Premise, Good Science", p. 138
The Flamingo's Smile (1985)

World , Nature , Science

“We are not wrong, we are not wrong in what we are doing. If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. And if we are wrong, God Almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to Earth. If we are wrong, justice is a lie, love has no meaning. And we are determined here in Montgomery to work and fight until "justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Address to the first Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) Mass Meeting, at Holt Street Baptist Church (5 December 1955) http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/mia_mass_meeting_at_holt_street_baptist_church/. "Justice runs down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream" is a quotation of Amos 5:24 in the Bible.
1950s

Love , God , Justice , Water

“You have no control over your cat! You can't say to your cat, "Cat, heel! Stay! Wait! Lie down! Roll over!" 'Cause the cat's just gonna be sitting there going, "Interesting words … have you finished?" While you're shouting all this to your cat, your dog's next to you, going … [mimes obeying all commands] "What the hell are you doing? I'm talking to the cat!"”

Eddie Izzard (1962) British stand-up comedian, actor and writer

"Oh, I'm sorry!"
Unrepeatable (1994)

Dogs , Cats , Hell , Waiting

“When you say 'Bedtime, bedtime, bedtime!' that's not what the child hears. What the child hears is 'Lie down in the dark… for hours… and don't move… I'm locking the door now.'.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

“It is just that, in so terrible a day, and in the last moments of my life, I should discover all the iniquity of falsehood, and make the truth triumph. I declare, then, in the face of heaven and earth, and acknowledge, though to my eternal shame, that I have committed the greatest crimes but it has been the acknowledging of those which have been so foully charged on the order. I attest - and truth obliges me to attest - that it is innocent! I made the contrary declaration only to suspend the excessive pains of torture, and to mollify those who made me endure them. I know the punishments which have been inflicted on all the knights who had the courage to revoke a similar confession; but the dreadful spectacle which is presented to me is not able to make me confirm one lie by another. The life offered me on such infamous terms I abandon without regret.”

Jacques de Molay (1243–1314) Grand Master of the Knights Templar

One of the foremost Templar scholars records of Jacques DeMolay's dying words.

Life , Pain , Truth , Courage

“Grow your tree of falsehood from a small grain of truth.
Do not follow those who lie in contempt of reality.Let your lie be even more logical than the truth itself,
So the weary travelers may find repose in the lie.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"Child of Europe" (1946), trans. Jan Darowski
Daylight (1953)

Truth , Travel , Tree

“It is a lie that I made the people starve. A lie, a lie in my face. This shows how little patriotism there is, how many treasonable offenses were committed.… At no point was there such an upswing, so much construction, so much consolidation in the Romanian provinces. I guaranteed that every village has its schools, hospitals and doctors. I have done everything to create a decent and rich life for the people in the country, like in no other country in the world.”

Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989) General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party

Statements at trial http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_the_closed_trial_of_Nicolae_and_Elena_Ceau%C5%9Fescu (25 December 1989)

Life , People , World , School

“Tragedy obviously does not lie in a conflict of Right and Wrong, but in a collision between two different kinds of Right…”

Peter Shaffer Equus

Equus (Longman, [1973] 1993), p. 11
Conferː "Tragedy, for me, is not a conflict between right and wrong, but between two different kinds of right."
Interviewed by Mike Wood for the William Inge Center for the Arts. http://www.ingecenter.org/interviews/PeterShaffertext.htm

“[Word-for-word translation]
O stranger, announce to the Lacadaemonians [Spartans] that here
We lie, to their words [or laws] obedient.”

Simonides of Ceos (-556–-468 BC) Ancient Greek musician and poet

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
Epitaph on the Cenotaph of Thermopylae, recorded by Herodotus.
There is a long unsolved dispute around the interpretation of the word rhemasi, such as laws, words or orders.
Variant translations:
Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passest by,
That here obedient to their laws we lie.
Stranger, go tell the men of Lacedaemon
That we, who lie here, did as we were ordered.
Stranger, bring the message to the Spartans that here
We remain, obedient to their orders.
Oh foreigner, tell the Lacedaemonians
That here we lie, obeying their words.
Go, tell the Spartans, passerby,
that here by Spartan law we lie.
Go, tell the Spartans
stranger passing by,
that here, obedient to Spartan law,
we dead of Sparta lie

Law

“Few are the beliefs, still fewer the superstitions of to-day. We pretend to account for everything, till we do not believe enough for that humility so essential to moral discipline. But the dark creed of the fatalist still holds its ground — there is that within us, which dares not deny what, in the still depths of the soul, we feel to have a mysterious predominance. To a certain degree we controul our own actions — we have the choice of right or wrong; but the consequences, the fearful consequences, lie not with us. Let any one look upon the most important epochs of his life; how little have they been of his own making — how one slight thing has led on to another, till the result has been the very reverse of our calculations. Our emotions, how little are they under our own controul! how often has the blanched lip, or the flushed cheek, betrayed what the will was strong to conceal! Of all our sensations, love is the one which has most the stamp of Fate. What a mere chance usually leads to our meeting the person destined to alter the whole current of our life. What a mystery even to ourselves the influence which they exercise over us. Why should we feel so differently towards them, to what we ever felt before? An attachment is an epoch in existence — it leads to casting off old ties, that, till then, had seemed our dearest; it begins new duties; often, in a woman especially, changes the whole character; and yet, whether in its beginning, its continuance or its end, love is as little within our power as the wind that passes, of which no man knows whither it goeth or whence it comes.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

No.14. The Bride of Lammermuir — LUCY ASHTON.
Literary Remains

Love , Life , Fate , Fear

“The strength of capitalism does not lie in the neoclassical idea of stability, but in its ability to unleash this creative energy. like a chaotic mathematical system, it is capable of producing surprise.”

David Orrell (1962) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Other Side Of The Coin (2008), Chapter 6, At Rest Versus In Motion, p. 194

Mathematics , Idea

“On the second day, they started inviting their equally rowdy friends into my apartment, and we exchanged more small talk. To my indignant surprise, they asked me the question I always dreaded answering: “Are you a virgin?” I admitted that I was a virgin. I always admitted the truth about this. It was my life struggle, and I couldn’t lie about such a thing.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), 19-22, UC Santa Barbara, Inceldom

Life , Truth , Question

“A question: when is a bed not a bed? When it is angled lie-flat. My back hurts, my legs ache and my clothes are all rumpled - and all because the airline, which claimed to have a bed, actually offered up a torture machine which I prefer to call a slide.”

Richard Quest (1962) English television journalist

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
His blog for CNN http://edition.cnn.com/TRAVEL/blogs/richard.quest/

Question , Hurt , Clothes

“…the information revolution. Almost everybody is sure …that it is proceeding with unprecedented speed; and …that its effects will be more radical than anything that has gone before. Wrong, and wrong again. Both in its speed and its impact, the information revolution uncannily resembles its two predecessors …The first industrial revolution, triggered by James Watt's improved steam engine in the mid-1770s…did not produce many social and economic changes until the invention of the railroad in 1829 …Similarly, the invention of the computer in the mid-1940s, …it was not until 40 years later, with the spread of the Internet in the 1990s, that the information revolution began to bring about big economic and social changes. …the same emergence of the “super-rich” of their day, characterized both the first and the second industrial revolutions. …These parallels are close and striking enough to make it almost certain that, as in the earlier industrial revolutions, the main effects of the information revolution on the next society still lie ahead.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

"The way ahead" Economist.com http://www.economist.com/ (November 2001)
1990s and later

Change , Speed

“Reagan finally won the nomination by promoting "Reaganomics", an economic program based on the theory that the government could lower taxes while increasing spending and at the same time actually reduce the federal budget by sacrificing a live chicken by the light of a full moon. Bush charged that this amounted to "voo-doo economics," which got him into hot water until he explained that what he meant to say was "doo-doo economics." Satisfied, Reagan made Bush his vice-presidential nominee. The turning point in the election campaign came during the October 8 debate between Reagan and Carter, when Reagan's handlers came up with a shrewd strategy: No matter what Carter said, Reagan would respond by shaking his head in a sorrowful manner and saying: "There you go again." This was brilliant, because (a) it required the candidate to remember only four words, and (b) he delivered them so believably that everything Carter said seemed like a lie. If Carter had stated that the Earth was round, Reagan would have shaken his head, saying, "There you go again," and millions of voters would have said: "Yeah! What does Carter think we are? Stupid?”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Dave Barry, Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States (1989), p. 167

Stupidity , Thinking , Light , Water

“We are in a degenerate state of self-government. In fact, even to use the words self-government, is not only an exaggeration, it's a lie. It's a big lie!”

Jerry Brown (1938) American politician/lawyer and current governor of California

Speaking to the International Transpersonal Association Conference in Santa Clara, California, 10 June 1995.
Political Consciousness and Transformative Action, LeapNonprofit.org, League for Earth & Animal Protection (LEAP), 2007-06-12 http://www.leapnonprofit.org/phil%20article4.htm,
1995

“I think if you left grownups to do what they really actually wanted most in the world to do, every single one of them would lie down and take a nap for the rest of their life. I know this because that's what every grownup does as soon as they're alone.”

Orson Scott Card book Lovelock

Lovelock (1994)

Life , World , Thinking

“That'll be the day — when you say goodbye.
That'll be the day — when you make me cry.
You say you're gonna leave — you know it's a lie, 'cause
That'll be the day when I die.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

That'll Be the Day, written by Buddy Holly, Jerry Allison, and Norman Petty
Song lyrics, The "Chirping" Crickets (1957)

Cry

“There is no such thing as a 'white lie' — there has not yet been an untruth uttered, that sooner or later hasn't led to unfortunate consequences for everyone.”

Adolph Freiherr Knigge book Über den Umgang mit Menschen

Es gibt keine Notlügen; noch nie ist eine Unwahrheit gesprochen worden, die nicht früh oder spät nachteillige Folgen für jedermann gehabt hätte.
Über den Umgang mit Menschen (1788)

“O Dormer, how can I behold thy fate,
And not the wonders of thy youth relate;
How can I see the gay, the brave, the young,
Fall in the cloud of war, and lie unsung!
In joys of conquest he resigns his breath,
And, filled with England's glory, smiles in death.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 309.

Death , Fate , War , Youth

“They’ve got a kind of committee there,” he had said, “an office. Acceptable Doctrine, it’s called. Everyone on the committee is mostly concerned about what people believe. They’re running things, too; don’t let them tell you they aren’t. Truth doesn’t enter in. If they’ve decided something is doctrine, they’ll ignore all evidence to the contrary and lie to your face. You don’t want to run afoul of those types, do you? Not if you have questions to ask. No.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 10 (p. 191)

People , Truth , Question

“I was your luxury. For nineteen years I have been put in your man’s world and was forbidden to touch anything and you made me think that all was going very well and that I did not have to worry about anything but putting flowers in vases. Why did you lie to me? Why did you keep me ignorant, if it was to admit to me one day that this world is cracking and that you are all powerless and to make me choose between a suicide and a murder?”

Jean Paul Sartre Dirty Hands

Jessica to Hugo, Act 5, sc. 2
Dirty Hands (1948)

World , Flowers , Thinking , Suicide

“Some Days retired from the rest
In soft distinction lie,
The Day that a companion came—
Or was obliged to die.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

The Single Hound, p. 271
Collected Poems (1993)

“We perceive clearly that theories and hypotheses are not accepted or rejected outright; they have their periods of activity, and then lie dormant for a time, only to be revived in a new form later on.”

J. R. Partington (1886–1965) British chemist

Introduction
Higher Mathematics for Chemical Students (1911)

Time

“How it happened that I in particular discovered the relativity theory, it seemed to lie in the following circumstance. The normal adult never bothers his head about space-time problems. Everything there is to be thought about it, in his opinion, has already been done in early childhood. I, on the contrary, developed so slowly that I only began to wonder about space and time when I was already grown up. In consequence I probed deeper into the problem than an ordinary child would have done.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In Carl Seelig's Albert Einstein: A Documentary Biography (1956), Seelig reports that Einstein said this to James Franck, p. 71 http://books.google.com/books?id=VCbPAAAAMAAJ&q=%22how+it+happened%22#search_anchor.
I sometimes ask myself how did it come that I was the one to develop the theory of relativity. The reason, I think, is that a normal adult never stops to think about problems of space and time. But my intellectual development was retarded, as a result of which I began to wonder about space and time only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could go deeper into the problem than a child with normal abilities.
Variant translation which appears in Einstein: The Life and Times by Ronald W. Clark (1971), p. 27 http://books.google.com/books?id=6IKVA0lY6MAC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA27#v=onepage&q&f=false
Attributed in posthumous publications

Problem , Time , Childhood

“In every man's writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Goethe (1828).
1820s, Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827–1855)

“Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die,
And lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.”

Joseph Addison The Campaign

Source: The Campaign (1704), Line 152.

“Judy: [after catching defendant in a lie; he admitted that he was living with his witness when a few moments earlier he had said he wasn't] PERFECT! So now you're living back together again. And why, Nick, did you feel as if it was necessary to lie to me a moment ago?
Defendant: I… have been staying in Minneapolis every now and then… but I… didn't mean to lie to you.
Judy: There's another reason, Nick.
Defendant: There's no reason to lie. I'm sorry.
Judy: Well…
Defendant's Witness: Not many people know that he is staying there with me.
Judy: Now ten million people know that he's staying with you.”

Judith Sheindlin (1942) American lawyer, judge, television personality, and author

Audience laughs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8B09JYv4Hs&feature=channel_video_title
Dialogue

People , Feeling , Perfection

“It's those who lie outside ordinary experience who have the most to teach us.”

Malcolm Gladwell book Outliers

Malcolm Gladwell (2008). Outliers: The Story of Success. p. 198

“All the light which is radiated… will, after it has traveled a distance r, lie on the surface of a sphere whose area S is given by the first of the formulae (3). And since the practical procedure… in determining d is equivalent to assuming that all this light lies on the surface of a Euclidean sphere of radius d, it follows…4 \pi d^2 = S = 4 \pi r^2 (1 - \frac{K r^2}{3} + …);whence, to our approximation 4)d = r (1- \frac{K r^2}{6} + …), or
r = d (1 + \frac{K d^2}{6} + …).</center”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Travel , Light

“There is not, and there never was on this earth, a work of human policy so well deserving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. The history of that Church joins together the two great ages of human civilisation. No other institution is left standing which carries the mind back to the times when the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of yesterday, when compared with the line of the Supreme Pontiffs. That line we trace back in an unbroken series, from the Pope who crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century to the Pope who crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond the time of Pepin the august dynasty extends, till it is lost in the twilight of fable. The republic of Venice came next in antiquity. But the republic of Venice was modern when compared with the Papacy; and the republic of Venice is gone, and the Papacy remains. The Papacy remains, not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful vigour. The Catholic Church is still sending forth to the farthest ends of the world missionaries as zealous as those who landed in Kent with Augustin, and still confronting hostile kings with the same spirit with which she confronted Attila. The number of her children is greater than in any former age. Her acquisitions in the New World have more than compensated for what she has lost in the Old. Her spiritual ascendency extends over the vast countries which lie between the plains of the Missouri and Cape Horn, countries which a century hence, may not improbably contain a population as large as that which now inhabits Europe. The members of her communion are certainly not fewer than a hundred and fifty millions; and it will be difficult to show that all other Christian sects united amount to a hundred and twenty millions. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that the term of her long dominion is approaching. She saw the commencement of all the governments and of all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not destined to see the end of them all. She was great and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished at Antioch, when idols were still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some traveller from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's.”

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay book Critical and Historical Essays

"Essay on Ludwig von Ranke's 'History of the Popes', in "Critical and Historical Essays", iii, (London; Longman, 7th Edn. 1952), 100-1.
Attributed

Life , Hostility , Children , Youth

“The spoken Word, the written Poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done Work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of Strength the man had in him will lie written in the Work he does. To work: why, it is to try himself against Nature, and her everlasting unerring Laws; these will tell a true verdict as to the man.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Faith , Law , Intelligence , Nature

“Rosalita jump a little lighter.
Senorita come sit by my fire.
I just want to be your love, ain't no lie.
Rosalita you're my stone desire.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Rosalita"
Song lyrics, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973)

Love

“A person with no children says, "Well I just love children," and you say "Why?" and they say, "Because a child is so truthful, that's what I love about 'em — they tell the truth." That's a lie, I've got five of 'em. The only time they tell the truth is if they're having pain.”

Bill Cosby (1937) American actor, comedian, author, producer, musician, activist

Himself (1983)

Love , Pain , Children , Truth

“Fine thoughts and moral dissertations from men who have not worked and suffered may be read, but they will be forgotten. No religion, no Ethical philosophy is worth anything, if the teacher has not lived the "life of an apostle," and been ready to die "the death of a martyr." "Not in passivity [the passive affects], but in activity, lie the evil and the good of the rational social animal, just as his virtue and his vice lie not in passivity, but in activity"”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

IX. 16
The Philosophy of Antoninus

Life , Death , Men , Religion

“But the beauty is not the madness
Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me.
And I am not a demigod,
I cannot make it cohere.”

Ezra Pound The Cantos

Canto CXVI
The Cantos

Beauty , Error , Madness

“I know that the evidence demanded by me does not exist. It is a Big Lie being spread by Hindu-baiters. Hindus have never done what they are being accused of. My only point in mentioning the incident is that even honest people can become victims of hostile propaganda which is not countered in good time.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

Hostility , People , Time

“Adorn thyself with simplicity and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. The poet says that Law rules all. And it is enough to remember that law rules all.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 31
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Love , God , Law , Indifference

“A thousand eyes are gazing down like bullet holes shot into the roof, as I lie here scratching for a grain of truth.”

Tod A (1965) American musician

"Balalaika", Get Off the Cross (We Need the Wood for the Fire (October 22, 1996).
Lyrics, Firewater

Truth

“His remains lie in state at the Mt. Carmel Church at Broadway corner 5th Street, New Manila, Quezon City until Tuesday.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2012, Statement: on the Passing of His Father Rep. Salvador H. Escudero III

“Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures. What would life be without them? It would not be worth having if it were not for struggles. Where would be the poetry of life? Never mind the struggles, the mistakes. I never heard a cow tell a lie, but it is only a cow—never a man. So never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Life , Beauty , Failure , Nature

“Legrand scratched his cheek with one of Conté's lead pencils and started to Koranize: I say unto you that you have been brought low by kings who lie with houris on the fat sofas of Stamboul and by those that were once among you and came from lands of the sunset, men pale but warlike, to steal your camels and women and snatch the bread from your teeth, in no wise to raise you high among the peoples of the earth. Meanwhile the C-in-C got on with other things - gunpowder factory, street-lighting, Paris-style café, accommodation for laundresses, a balloon demonstration.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, Napoleon Symphony (1974)

Women , Men , People , Light

“An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the same object. Men lie, because they think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is alike. If there were no gain to be got, your true-speaking man would tell untruths as much as your liar, and your liar would tell the truth as much as your true-speaking man.”

Darius I of Persia (-550–-486 BC) 3rd king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire (550–486 BC)

As quoted in The Histories by Herodotus, 3.72
The validity of the quote is questionable. http://www.shsu.edu/~his_ncp/Heropers.html
Attributed

Men , Truth , Thinking

“If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

"1901", p. 76. Sometimes misquoted as "If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing". Sometimes misattributed to Bertrand Russell or Anatole France
A Writer's Notebook (1946)

People

“The time has come for a wholly new approach to economic policy in Britain. The overriding need is for a long-term stabilisation programme to defeat inflation, recreate business confidence and provide a favourable climate for economic growth. At the head of such a programme must lie a firm commitment to a steady and gradual reduction in the rate of growth of the money supply, until it is consistent with our best guess at a potentially sustainable rate of economic growth. Only in this way can inflation be wrung out of the system. But this alone is not enough…An equally important part of a long term stabilisation plan has to be a reduction in the present Budget deficit…Indeed, something akin…to the old balanced Budget discipline needs to be restored: the secret of practical economic success, as overseas experience confirms, is the acceptance of known rules. Rules rule: OK?”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

The Times (14 September 1978), p. 16.

Money , Secret , Way , Confidence

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a slave of colonial forces like you and others. … Do not indulge yourself in things you have no business with! The lie is before you and the grave is in front of you!”

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia (1924–2015) former King of Saudi Arabia

In reply to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi at the Arab League Summit in Egypt, 2 March 2003 when Abdullah was Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. هنيئاً لك أيها الوطن بهذه القيادة, جريدة الرياض, 2011/02/25, 2013-02-16 http://www.alriyadh.com/2011/02/25/article607898.html,

Business , Country

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to an atheist (24 March 1954), p. 43
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

God , World , Science , Reading

“Near the eastern gate of the mosque lie two very big idols of copper connected together by stones. Every one who comes in and goes out of the mosque treads over them. On the site of this mosque was a bud khãnã that is an idol-house. After the conquest of Delhi it was turned into a mosque…”

Ibn Battuta (1304–1377) Moroccan explorer

About Delhi. The Rehalã of Ibn Battûta translated into English by Mahdi Hussain, Baroda, 1967, p. 27
Travels in Asia and Africa (Rehalã of Ibn Battûta)

Housing

“It is not manly to lie even about Satan.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Garfield's Words (1882)

“You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Eve to Cain, in Pt. I, Act II
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

Life , Death , Feeling , Fight

“The biggest lie and dishonesty about change or the impact of projects is created by the lords of poverty who profit from the business and industry of aid.”

Michael Elmore-Meegan (1959) British humanitarian

Changing the World

Business , Change

“Though shall not steal nor kill;
Not speak a lie;
Be angry with no one,
Nor scorn another man;
Nor glory in thyself;
Nor others hold you to blame
This is your inward purity;
This is your outward purity;
This is the way to win our Lord:
Kudalasangama”

Basava (1134–1196) a 12th-century Hindu philosopher, statesman, Kannada Bhakti poet of Lingayatism

Quoted in [Chekki, Danesh A. Chekki, Religion and Social System of the Vīraśaiva Community, http://books.google.com/books?id=x7JZMy1qntgC&pg=PA51, 1 January 1997, Greenwood Publishing Group, 978-0-313-30251-0, 51–]

Way

“He who has the fastest golf cart never has a bad lie.”

Mickey Mantle (1931–1995) Professional baseball player

Attributed without citation in Young, David. Breakthrough Power for Golfers: A Daily Guide to an Extraordinary Life, Wind Runner Press, 2011. p. 189.

“Each of the laws listed in the collection commonly and erroneously referred to as ‘The Ten Commandments’ were either already universal ordinances everywhere, adapted from Hammurabi’s stele of law from centuries earlier, or have no parallel in American jurisprudence. The laws of Moses are NOT our laws! The founding fathers made clear who their influences really were, and that their goal was a system of government directly opposed to everything Mosaic law or governance represented. To say that the Constitution was in any way inspired by any covenant between God and Moses is no less a lie than to say that America was founded on Biblical principles -which our textbooks also say. There is no truth in either of these statements. They were inserted to revise our history according to an overt agenda to instill and perpetuate conservative Christian authority. This is a major front of the fundamentalist Christian “culture wars” against honest, factual reality. There is no defense of these errors and no justification for imposing them as part of ‘education’. Our textbooks are demonstrably false and deliberately misleading, and they must be corrected.”

Aron Ra (1962) Aron Ra is an atheist activist and the host of the Ra-Men Podcast

Correct Texas' textbooks!" http://www.patheos.com/blogs/reasonadvocates/2015/11/01/correct-texas-textbooks/, Patheos (November 1, 2015)
Patheos

God , War , Truth , Education

“And behind their frail partitions
Business women lie and soak,
Seeing through the draughty skylight
Flying clouds and railway smoke.Rest you there, poor unbelov'd ones,
Lap your loneliness in heat,
All too soon the tiny breakfast,
Trolley-bus and windy street!”

John Betjeman (1906–1984) English poet, writer and broadcaster

"Business Girls" line 13, from A Few Late Chrysanthemums.
Poetry

Women , Business , Loneliness , Flying

“I watch the sea and the sky; sometimes I wade in the surf and build roads in the sand. At night I study the stars.”
“You have no friends?”
“No.”
“And what of the future?”
“The future stops at ‘now’.”
“As to that, I am not so sure,” said Shimrod. “It is at best a half-truth.”
“What of that? Half a truth is better than none: do you not agree?”
“Not altogether,” said Shimrod. “I am a practical man, I try to control the shape of the ‘nows’ which lie in the offing, instead of submitting to them as they occur.”
Melancthe gave an uninterested shrug. “You are free to do as you like.” Leaning back in the divan, she looked out across the sea.
Shimrod finally spoke. “Well then: are you ‘good’ or ‘bad’?”
“I don’t know.”
Shimrod became vexed. “Talking with you is like visiting an empty house.”

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Melancthe considered a moment before responding. “Perhaps,” she said, “you are visiting the wrong house. Or perhaps you are the wrong visitor.”
Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), Madouc (1989), Chapter 5, section 4 (p. 783)

Truth , Star , Study , Future

“Something there is that can refresh and revivify older people: joy in the activities of the younger generation—a joy, to be sure, that is clouded by dark forebodings in these unsettled times. And yet, as always, the springtime sun brings forth new life, and we may rejoice because of this new life and contribute to its unfolding; and Mozart remains as beautiful and tender as he always was and always will be. There is, after all, something eternal that lies beyond reach of the hand of fate and of all human delusions. And such eternals lie closer to an older person than to a younger one oscillating between fear and hope. For us, there remains the privilege of experiencing beauty and truth in their purest forms.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Letter to Queen Mother Elizabeth of Belgium (20 March, likely 1936), written to her when she was depressed over the recent death of her husband and daughter-in-law, p. 51
Attributed in posthumous publications, Albert Einstein: The Human Side (1979)

Life , Fate , People , Truth

“God don't lie…. And these are his words…. He speaks in stones and trees, the bones of things.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Source: Blood Meridian (1985), Chapter IX, Judge Holden

God , Tree

““And then along came Satan’s Eye Itself. Television.” He laughed, as at some fatal irony. “Don’t you hear the evil hum of the word, the knell of Satan? Television! It’s the ruling character of your lives, like the moon must have been for Indians. An oracle, a companion, a signal of the changing seasons. But rather than divine illumination, each night it spews forth Satan’s imagery. Murders, car crashes, mad policemen, perverted strangers! And you lie there decomposing in its flickering, blue-gray light, absorbing His horrid fantasies!””

Lucius Shepard book Green Eyes

Source: Green Eyes (1984), Chapter 10, p. 115

Cars , Light , Evil , Change

“Segregation. There was another one. America sees this now but it took a civil rights movement to betray their age. And 50 years ago the U. S. Supreme Court betrayed the age May 17, 1954, Brown vs. Board of Education came down and put the lie to the idea that separate can ever really be equal. Amen to that.”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

PENN Address (2004)

Age , Education , Idea

“In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

“Goethe; or, the Writer,” pp. 271-272
1850s, Representative Men (1850)

Appearance

“There are worse things than a lie… I have found… that it may be well to choose one sin in order that another may be shunned.”

Anthony Trollope book Doctor Wortle's School

Doctor Wortle's School (1881) Ch. 6

“The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must reach a high standard in several different directions and must combine talents not often found together. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher – in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician. Much, but not all, of this many-sidedness Marshall possessed. But chiefly his mixed training and divided nature furnished him with the most essential and fundamental of the economist's necessary gifts – he was conspicuously historian and mathematician, a dealer in the particular and the general, the temporal and the eternal, at the same time.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Source: Essays In Biography (1933), Alfred Marshall, p. 170; as cited in: Donald Moggridge (2002), Maynard Keynes: An Economist's Biography, p. 424

Mood , Understanding , Nature , Bird

“Lie down among the pines for a while, then get to plain pure white love-work … to help humanity and other mortals and the Lord.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. J.D. Hooker http://www.westadamsheritage.org/katharine-putnam-hooker (19 September 1911); published in The Life and Letters of John Muir http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/life/life_and_letters/default.aspx (1924), chapter 17, II; and in John Muir's Last Journey, edited by Michael P. Branch (Island Press, 2001), page 67
1910s

Love , Help

“Truth consists not in never lying but in knowing when to lie and when not to do so.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Falsehood, i
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part XIX - Truth and Convenience

Truth , Lying

“In the last few decades, it has become increasingly clear that humanity is facing a crisis of unprecedented proportions. Modern science has developed effective measures that could solve most of the urgent problems in today's world--combat the majority of diseases, eliminate hunger and poverty, reduce the amount of industrial waste, and replace destructive fossil fuels by renewable sources of clean energy. The problems that stand in the way are not of economical or technological nature. The deepest sources of the global crisis lie inside the human personality and reflect the level of consciousness evolution of our species.”

Stanislav Grof (1931) Czech pychiatrist

The Cosmic Game - Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness (1997), ISBN 0-7914-3876-7, p. 219.

Hunger , World , Disease , Way

“I want to run through the halls of my high school,
I want to scream at the
Top of my lungs.
I just found out there's no such thing as the real world,
Just a lie you've got to rise above.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

No Such Thing
Song lyrics, Room for Squares (2001)

World , School

“Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth, like a garment, wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,
Ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie
Open unto the fields and to the sky;
All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Composed upon Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802, l. 1 (1802).

Beauty , Soul

“Were God to give us, at last, the cable, or patch-cord that links the Sun to the Climate System it would have on the solar end a banana plug, and on the other, where it hooks into the Earth—in ways we don’t yet know—a Hydra-like tangle of multiple 24-pin parallel computer connectors. It is surely at this end of the problem where the greatest challenges lie.”

John A. Eddy (1931–2009) American astronomer

Source: NASA EOS Project Science Office: The Earth Observer January/February 2004, Vol. 16, No. 1 http://eospso.gsfc.nasa.gov/eos_observ/pdf/Jan-Feb04.pdf, Page 4

God , Way , Problem , Sun

“I realise it’s proved to people that I don’t love them. It’s dawning on me now that if I say I love someone… it’s like lying, really. As long as I’m taking it, the lie continues. I’ve got a lot of proving myself to do.”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

The Sunday Times, May 14, 2006
Drugs

Love , People , Lying

“For malice will with joy the lie receive,
Report, and what it wishes true, believe.”

Thomas Yalden (1670–1736) English poet

The Second Book of Ovid's Art of Love, lines 706–707.

Joy

“The first thing the Muslim Sultanate of Delhi started on was construction of impressive buildings. The first sultan Qutbuddin Aibak had to establish Muslim power in India and to raise buildings "as quickly as possible, so that no time might be lost in making an impression on their newly-conquered subjects". Architecture was considered as the visual symbol of Muslim political power. It denoted victory with authority. The first two buildings of the early period in Delhi are the Qutb Minar and the congregational mosque named purposefully as the Quwwat-ul-Islam (might of Islam) Masjid. This mosque was commenced by Aibak in 592/1195. It was built with materials and gold obtained by destroying 27 Hindu and Jain temples in Delhi and its neighborhood. A Persian inscription in the mosque testifies to this. The Qutb Minar, planned and commenced by Aibak sometime in or before 1199 and completed by Iltutmish, was also constructed with similar materials, "the sculptured figures on the stones being either defaced or concealed by turning them upside down". A century and a quarter later Ibn Battutah describes the congregational mosque and the Qutb Minar. "About the latter he says that its staircase is so wide that elephants can go up there." About the former his observations are interesting. "Near the eastern gate of the mosque their lie two very big idols of copper connected together by stones. Every one who comes in and goes out of the mosque treads over them. On the site of this mosque was a bud khana, that is an idol house. After the conquest of Delhi it was turned into a mosque."”

Qutb al-Din Aibak (1150–1210) Turkic peoples king of Northwest India

Quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 5 (quoting Gordon Sanderson, 'Archaeology at the Qutb', Archaeological Survey of India Report, 1912-13; Ibn Battutah)

Time , Victory , Housing

“Everyone always believes everything nasty of everyone else, and especially if it's a lie.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Vegmey Hansdóttir
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

“There is about him something that seems to soothe and hypnotize. To the best of my knowledge, he has never encountered a charging rhinoceros, but should this contingency occur, I have no doubt that the animal, meeting his eye, would check itself in mid-stride, roll over and lie purring with its legs in the air.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Right Ho, Jeeves

Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)

Knowledge , Animals

“We two will lie i' the shadow of
That living mystic tree
Within whose secret growth the Dove
Is sometimes felt to be,
While every leaf that His plumes touch
Saith His Name audibly.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

The Blessed Damozel http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/715.html (1850)

Secret , Tree

“This is the greatest political question of our time. How can we put an end to the empire of mega-corporations and restore democracy? If I knew I would be the savior of the world. What I think I can tell is that the media are crucial. The power of the corporate media enables truth to be suppressed and lies to be passed as truth. You probably heard that a half-truth can be worse than a lie. A lot of the things that our governments and media saying are 1/10 truths, 9/10 lies. And it doesn't take very many of them together to create a completely fictional world view (like the one that Bush presents when he talks). So I recommend that people stop listening to the mainstream media. Don't watch television news. Don't listen the news on radio. Don't read news from ordinary newspapers. Get it from variety of web sites which are not operated under the power of business money and you'll have better chance of not being fooled by the systematic lies that they all tell, because they're all paid by the same people to tell the same lies or 9/10 lies.”

Richard Stallman (1953) American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

2000s, What is free software? (2006)

Money , People , Truth , World

“The marvelous is of necessity a lie, a distortion. At best it is a metaphor which leads to the truth. I think that I know what causes the World’s Pain, lady. Or at least I think I know what contributes to that Pain.”
“And what would that be, Ulrich von Bek?”
“By telling a single lie to oneself or to another, by denying a single fact of the world as it has been created, one adds to the World’s Pain. And pain, lady, creates pain. And one must not seek to become saint or sinner, God or Devil. One must seek to become human and to love the fact of one’s humanity.”
I became embarrassed. “That is all I have learned, lady.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

“It is all that Heaven demands,” she said.
Source: The von Bek family, The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 16 (p. 158)

Love , God , Pain , Truth

“Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse?”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"The River"
Song lyrics, The River (1980)

Dreams

“The great masses of people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one. Especially if it is repeated again and again.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

This misquote could possibly have two possible sources: an abridged version of a paragraph in Mein Kampf regarding the Big Lie, or a report by the United States Office of Strategic Services about Hitler's psychological profile http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/oss-profile-03-02.html. The second version is very close to an actual quote by Joseph Goebbels.
Misattributed
Variant: The bigger/more blatant a lie, the more people will believe it.

People

“I am not […] asserting that humans are either genial or aggressive by inborn biological necessity. Obviously, both kindness and violence lie within the bounds of our nature because we perpetrate both, in spades. I only advance a structural claim that social stability rules nearly all the time and must be based on an overwhelmingly predominant (but tragically ignored) frequency of genial acts, and that geniality is therefore our usual and preferred response nearly all the time. […] [T]he center of human nature is rooted in ten thousand ordinary acts of kindness that define our days.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Eight Little Piggies

"Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness", p. 282
Eight Little Piggies (1993)

Nature , Time

Quotes about lies page 16

Quotes about lies
page 16