Quotes about the truth
page 57

“To be clear: there is no question that postmodernism has advanced the struggle against all forms of oppression, including the oppression experienced by trans people, those with disabilities or who face age discrimination, and many other forms of oppression that were neglected before postmodernist theories began to flourish in the 1980s and 1990s…. At the same time, however, postmodernism also arose as a blanket rejection of political generalization, and categories of s and material realities, referred to as "truths," "totalities," and "universalities"--in the name of espousing "anti-essentialism." (To be sure, such a blanket rejection of political generalization is itself a political generalization--which is an inherent contradiction of postmodernist thought!)”

Sharon Smith (writer) (1956) American historian

A Marxist Case For Intersectionality (2017)

People, Age, Question, Reality

“Large-scale riots in East Pakistan have compelled over two lakh Hindus and other minorities to come over to India. Indians naturally feel incensed by the happenings in East Bengal. To bring the situation under control and to prescribe the right remedy for the situation it is essential that the malady be properly diagnosed. And even in this state of mental agony, the basic values of our national life must never be forgotten. It is our firm conviction that guaranteeing the protection of the life and property of Hindus and other minorities in Pakistan is the responsibility of the Government of India. To take a nice legalistic view about the matter that Hindus in Pakistan are Pakistani nationals would be dangerous and can only result in killings and reprisals in the two countries, in greater or lesser measure. When the Government of India fails to fulfill this obligation towards the minorities in Pakistan, the people understandably become indignant. Our appeal to the people is that this indignation should be directed against the Government and should in no case be given vent to against the Indian Muslims. If the latter thing happens, it only provides the Government with a cloak to cover its own inertia and failure, and an opportunity to malign the people and repress them. So far as the Indian Muslims are concerned, it is our definite view that, like all other citizens, their life and property must be protected in all circumstances. No incident and no logic can justify any compromise with truth in this regard. A state, which cannot guarantee the right of living to its citizens, and citizens who cannot assure safety of their neighbours, would belong to the barbaric age. Freedom and security to every citizen irrespective of his faith has indeed been India’s sacred tradition. We would like to reassure every Indian Muslim in this regard and would wish this message to reach every Hindu home that it is their civic and national duty to ensure the fulfillment of this assurance.”

Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916–1968) RSS thinker and co-founder of the political party Bharatiya Jana Sangh

Joint statement for the Indo-Pak confederation that D Upadhyaya signed, on 12 April 1964, with Dr Lohia, quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008)

Life, People, Age, Faith

“It is characteristic of the Oxford school of criticism to understand these [metaphysical] fallacies as logical non sequiturs—as though philosophers throughout the centuries had been, for reasons unknown, just a bit too stupid to discover the elementary flaws in their arguments. The truth of the matter is that elementary logical mistakes are quite rare in the history of philosophy; what appear to be errors in logic to minds disencumbered of questions that have been uncritically dismissed as “meaningless” are usually caused by semblances, unavoidable for beings whose whole existence is determined by appearance. Hence, In our context the only relevant question is whether the semblances are inauthentic or authentic ones, whether they are caused by dogmatic beliefs and arbitrary assumptions, mere mirages that disappear upon closer inspection, or whether they are inherent in the paradoxical condition of a living being that, though itself part of the world of appearances, is in possession of a faculty, the ability to think, that permits the mind to withdraw from the world without ever being able to leave it or transcend it.”

Hannah Arendt book The Life of the Mind

Source: The Life of the Mind (1971/1978), p. 45.

Stupidity, World, School, Error

“I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

From Adams to Stieglitz' (1990)
Source: 'Alfred Stieglitz' Photo notes, August 1946, p. 65

Search, Passion

“The truth about the nature and the power of the elite is not some secret which men of affairs know but will not tell. … No matter how great their actual power, they tend to be less acutely aware of it than of the resistance of others to its use.”

C. Wright Mills book The Power Elite

Source: The Power Elite (1956), p. 4.

Men, Secret, Nature

“The imperturbability of the Church resides in her ability to harmonize the unconditional preservation of eternal truths with an unmatchable elasticity of adjustment to the circumstances and challenges of changing times.”

Edith Stein (1891–1942) Jewish-German nun, theologian and philosopher

Essays on Woman (1996), Problems of Women's Education (1932)

Change, Time

“Because they know all the words, they think they know all the truths.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Thinking

“Truth must the guide of those who hold the power; but humility is their sign, the promise that their privileges are in safe hands.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address at the Convocation of the University of British Columbia, May 18, 1954
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

““Why not alter the habits of a lifetime and speak with candour?” asked Shimrod. “Truth, after all, need not be only the tactic of last resort.””

Jack Vance Lyonesse Trilogy

Source: Lyonesse Trilogy (1983-1989), The Green Pearl (1985), Chapter 17, section 2 (p. 657)

“I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this.”

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

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Divinity

Life, Men, Health, World

“Through every legitimate educational procedure the truth must be driven home to the masses of people that the race of armaments is not a means of defense but a race to mutual suicide.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

People, Education, Home, Suicide

“Put simply, I want to teach people in this country to tell lies from the truth and to tell bad from good. … This is what our people still cannot do.”

Pavel 183 (1983–2013) Russian street artist

as reported by Vladimir Isachenkov, in "P183 Dead: Street Artist Known As 'Russian Banksy' Dies At 29 Years Old" at The Huffington Post (3 April 2013)

People, Country

“O ye who are invested with the Bayán! Regard not yourselves as being like unto the people to whom the Qur’án or the Gospel or other Scriptures of old were given, since at the time of His manifestation ye shall stray farther from God than did they. If ye happen to shut yourselves out it would never cross your minds that ye were shut out from Him. It behooveth you to consider how the people unto whom the Qur’án was given were debarred from the Truth, for indeed ye will act in a like manner, thinking that ye are doers of good. If ye perceive the degree of your deprivation of God, ye will wish to have perished from the face of the earth and to have sunk into oblivion. The day will come when ye will earnestly desire to know that which would meet with the good-pleasure of God but, alas, ye shall find no path unto Him. Ye, even as camels that wander aimlessly, will not find a pasture wherein ye may gather and unite upon a Cause in which ye can assuredly believe. At that time God shall cause the Sun of Truth to shine forth and the oceans of His bounty and grace to surge, while ye will have chosen droplets of water as the object of your desire, and will have deprived yourselves of the plenteous waters in His oceans.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

XVI, 13
The Kitáb-I-Asmá

God, People, Pleasure, Thinking

“The problem of the novel is to stay truthful. The short story, if you really are intense and you have an exciting idea, writes itself in a few hours.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Idea, Problem

“I am saying that truth may certainly be true whatever my opinion may be, but it has no authority with me until I perceive it to be true.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.56

“Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.”

Jacques Maritain (1882–1973) French philosopher

Theonas: Conversations of a Sage (1921). Sheed & Ward, 1933, p. 9.

God, Intelligence

“Form and size constitute the foundation of all search for truth.”

Francis Wayland Parker (1837–1902) Union Army officer

Source: Talks on Pedagogics, (1894), p. 72. Reported in Moritz (1914, 292)

“Imagination's truth is from its power:
Man's genius can create when nature's felt;
He copies when he deems that he invents.”

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

Translations, From the French

Imagination, Nature

“Truth does not require your painting, brother; it is itself beauty. Unfold it, and men will be captivated. Take your brush to set off the rainbow, or give a new tinge of splendor to the setting sun, but keep it away from the "Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley."”

David Thomas (born 1813) (1813–1894) 19th-century Welsh preacher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 606.

Men, Beauty, Sun, Painting

“Thus, it is established that Adam is the human race, by whatever names he was called. Since it is clear that he became manifest in the form of a man, naturally on every plane he is fallible. But God is not his partner in any errors. For, he taught him beauty and ugliness and truth and falsehood, and he learned good and evil. But his kingship is a result of the divine decree. And if he remains continually in his position or steps down, or is deposed from it, in each case it is the result of the divine decree. His cause is exalted with God. Whenever he is a temporal ruler, his leadership is like that of any other. If he is among the prophets, his commands and prohibitions are from God, and his kingship is by God’s command, and he is the leader of the people as long as he lives. After their deaths, some hold that they must continue to be obeyed, and others mention them with their lips, and love for them is continual.”

Subh-i-Azal (1831–1912) Persian religious leader

Treatise on Kingship

Love, Death, God, People

“He who has lost only those of whose faith and truth he is sure, has not yet reached the depth of human desolation.”

Evelyn Beatrice Hall book The Friends of Voltaire

Source: The Friends of Voltaire (1906), Ch. 1 : D'Alembert: The Thinker, p.28

Faith

“I went to a Harvard seminar in Sydney recently and the name of the seminar was 'Family businesses: successes and pitfalls'. The lecturer there said a typical family business is one where the founder starts it, the second generation builds it up and the third generation blows it up. Now there is a lot of truth in that.”

Hari Punja (1936) Fijian businessman

Interview with the Fiji Times http://www.Fijitimes.com, 25 September 2005 (excerpts)

Family, Business, Success

“I read it because I was asked to explain what the truth is. I said it with a lot of pain. I myself am a practicing Hindu, I myself am a Durga worshiper. These are authenticated documents from the university itself.”

Smriti Irani (1972) Indian politician

After reading a pamphlet denigrating Durga which was allegedly published by JNU students , as quoted in " 'I Am A Durga Worshipper,' Says Smriti Irani Amid Apology Demands http://www.ndtv.com/cheat-sheet/smriti-irani-must-apologise-or-house-wont-run-says-opposition-10-developments-1281440" NDTV (26 February 2016)

Pain, Universe, Reading

“Mythical thinking thrives in a culture that eschews objective truth: ours.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Faking History To Make The Black Kids Feel Good" http://dailycaller.com/2017/01/16/faking-history-to-make-the-black-kids-feel-good/ The Daily Caller, January 13, 2017 2010s, 2017

Thinking

“Lord Peter Wimsey: The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it – that is at the bottom of the ψευδῆ λέγειν ὡς δεῖ.”

Dorothy L. Sayers book Gaudy Night

Gaudy Night (1936)
Source: From Aristotle's Poetics: the right way to tell lies.

“He seemed to be witnessing with his own eyes the supreme bankruptcy of humanity. Wealth had spoken the truth that night on the mountain.”

Gabrielle Roy book The Tin Flute

Source: The Tin Flute (1945), P. 376.

Mountain, Night, Wealth

“I have found a truth that humanity needs, that brings unspeakable joy to human hearts and homes, that brightens all the life, that assuages sorrow, that dispels care, that kills the materialistic spirit of our age, and lifts mankind into noble thought and life”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Defence at his Heresy Trial

Life, Age, Home, Heart

“The Painter's skill has seized a moment where
Her hand is wreathing mid his raven hair;
And he is bent in worship, as that touch,
That soft light touch, were ecstasy too much.
He is just turned from that bewildering face
To the fair arm that holds the magic vase —
The purple liquor is just sparkling up —
The youth has pledged his heart's truth on that cup!”

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

(10th August 1822) Sketches from Drawings by Mr. Dagley. Sketch the Third. The Cup of Circe
The London Literary Gazette, 1821-1822

Youth, Light, Heart

“Nothing has ever been more sure-fire than truth and integrity.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

“Dogma is intended for, and suited to, the great mass of the human race; and as such it can contain merely allegorical truth that it nevertheless has to pass off as truth sensu proprio [in the proper sense].”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Als auf die große Masse des Menschengeschlechts berechnet und derselben angemessen, kann bloß allegorische Wahrheit enthalten, welche sie jedoch als sensu proprio wahr geltend zu machen hat.
Sämtliche Werke, Bd. 5, p. 160, E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 147
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities

Sense

“To tell the truth, I myself never quite feel that I know what I am talking about — if I did, and when I do, the thing written seems nothing to me. However, what I do write and allow to survive I always feel is worth while and that nobody else has ever come as near as I have to the thing I have intimated if not expressed. To me it's a matter of first understanding that which may not be put to words. I might add more but to no purpose. In a sense, I must express myself, you're right, but always completely incomplete if that means anything.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

To Harriet Monroe (14 October 1913), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 26
General sources

Feeling, Understanding, Sense

“Here's a viewer's guide to BP media briefings. Whenever you hear someone with a British accent talking about this on behalf of British Petroleum they are not telling you the truth. That's the bottom-line.”

Anthony Weiner (1964) American politician

Interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBIdZYOUNS8 on MSNBC (June 7, 2010)

“So, Kent Hovind gets out of prison and every atheist wants a piece of him. I understand that; I hate liars, I hate anyone who deceives even little old ladies and especially other people's children. So, of course I'd love to have the opportunity to get into it with Mister (not Doctor) Kent Hovind, as would every other atheist activist with a passion for science and a concern for truth. Understand though that this charlatan is every kind of fraud. He just wants to reestablish his racket. His schtick is to pretend to be more important than he is; we all know that his thesis was just as bogus as the PHD that he bought from a mail order catalog for about $100, he also claims to have taught high school science for about 15 years, hoping that folks will think that he has some verifiable connection to a high school somewhere (an actual school), but what I suspect is really the case is he may have preached to homeschooled kids at his house (which he used as a church sometimes). I can understand Atheist Podcast wanting to have this guy on to take him to task, but remember, he is a conman, a professional fraud. In his mind, he gains merit and financial supporters as a result of being "oppressed in the face of adversity", so go ahead and have him on, but only as a sideshow freak, someone to gawk at; show him the contempt he deserves. Don't treat him like an opponent, as if he had something to bring to the table.”

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

Youtube, Other, Debating Dr Dunno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKw8K7o-vwY (August 4, 2015)

Love, Hate, Children, People

“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285
1920s

Error, Support

“Historically, it may be useful to fancy playfulness and piety as being the respective residues of the aristocratic and priestly backgrounds of the intellectual function. The element of play seems to be rooted in the ethos of the leisure class, which has always been central in the history of creative imagination and humanistic learning. The element of piety is reminiscent of the priestly inheritance of the intellectuals: the quest for and the possession of truth was a holy office. As their legatee, the modern intellectual inherits the vulnerability of the aristocrat to the animus of Puritanism and egalitarianism and the vulnerability of the priest to anticlericalism and popular assaults upon hierarchy. We need not be surprised, then, if the intellectual’s position has rarely been comfortable in a country which is, above all others, the home of the democrat and the antinomian.”

Richard Hofstadter (1916–1970) American historian

Source: Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1974), pp. 32-33

Home, Imagination, History, Learning

“Love of the streets is the love out of which I see deeply I love God, how near I come to the truth.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952)

Love, God

“The world may be more complex and uncertain than we would like, but giving away our freedom for the false promises of protection is not a sustainable solution. We are defined not just by what we preach, but by what we practice. We cannot claim to be an enlightened democratic society if we live in breach of these values, without the rule of law, without reason, or the rigorous commitment to truth.”

Heather Brooke (1970) American journalist

Page 238.
The Revolution Will Be Digitised: Dispatches From the Information War, 1st Edition

World, Law, Freedom, Falseness

“The authority of science … promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies.… Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality…. In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Prophesy Deliverance! (2002)

Intelligence, Idea, Knowledge, Thinking

“Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination of the heart.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

The Hindu (26 February 1995)

Hope, Imagination, Literature, Heart

“Myths simply throw roadblocks in the path to enlightenment, and it is from truth that we have the most to learn. One man's truth, however, can be another's myth, and only through dispassionate and disinterested dissection of such stories can we tell the difference. The Confederate experience is dotted with episodes that are not particularly admirable.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: The Cause Lost: Myths and Realities of the Confederacy (1996), p. 178

Learning

“No truth can be said to be seen as it is until it is seen in its relation to all other truths. In this relation only is it true.”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 603.

“From my days as a Marine in combat, to my tenure working undercover in the FBI, to my service as a Congressman representing the hardworking families on Staten Island and Brooklyn, I have spent my entire life fighting on behalf of the People with honor and integrity. The past 24 hours haven’t changed a thing, and I plan to work harder than ever for the people I am exceedingly proud to represent. To my constituents, let me be absolutely clear: the trumped-up charges against me are false and after my peers see the truth, justice will prevail. And while this groundless witch hunt proves there are powerful forces dedicated to tarnishing my reputation as part of a political vendetta, I’ll tell you what it doesn’t do: It doesn’t take back the billions of dollars in Superstorm Sandy aid I fought for in Congress, it doesn’t undo my flood insurance reform bill that will spare millions of Americans from skyrocketing premiums and home foreclosures, and it doesn’t negate the countless success stories of my office helping constituents with difficult challenges, from losing health coverage thanks to Obamacare, to being denied veteran survivor benefits, to helping our seniors deal with multiple daily struggles, simply put…the lives my staff and I have touched for the better are innumerable. And that’s why I am so heartened by the outpouring of love and support – I am truly humbled to work for the most salt of the earth people in the world. Which is why I am back working hard and doing what I’ve done from day one, relentless trying to improve their quality of life through old fashioned hard work and determination.”

Michael Grimm (1970) American politician

Facebook (29 April 2014) https://www.facebook.com/repmichaelgrimm 2010s

Love, Life, People, Health

“I do not know whether it was the will of God, or just an evolutionary accident, but as it happens I am Afrikaans. This is a circumstance with which I am normally perfectly content. The truth is that I actually do not think about it too much, just as I do not think about it too much that I have a liver. The current flutterings about Afrikaans, however, I find disturbing. It is not doing the image of Afrikaners, and hence also of Afrikaans, any good.A mere ten years after the end of apartheid (yes, there was such a thing, and it was evil) to beat one's chest in such a self-justificatory manner, is bad taste morally.…
We are … being called up by certain parties to mobilise for Afrikaans, to fight for the survival of Afrikaans, and for minority rights. The problem is, however, that I do not see myself currently as part of a minority. When, in the 1970s and 1980s, as an Afrikaner, I resisted apartheid – and not in the 1990s when it became fashionable – then I felt myself part of a minority. At present I mainly find myself with an enormous feeling of moral relief. I would now like to carry on with my life and make a constructive contribution at the level of content. I do not wish to have to write letters like this one.”

Paul Cilliers (1956–2011) South African philosopher

Paul Cilliers. A letter to The Burger, 10 October 2005; Cited in: Chris Brink (2006) No Lesser Place: The Taaldebat at Stellenbosch. p. 133

Life, God, Feeling, Fashion

“Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's a long and complicated story of the rise of a desire for scientific relativism. Part of it may well be simply sort of rage against reason, the fear of the sciences and a kind of total dislike of the arrogance of a great many scientists who say we're finding out the truth about everything—and here [with Kuhn] there was a way to undermine that arrogance.”

Ian Hacking (1936) Canadian philosopher

Ian Hacking, in Gary Stix, "A Q&A with Ian Hacking on Thomas Kuhn's Legacy as "The Paradigm Shift" Turns 50" (April 27, 2012)

Fear, Way, Rage, Science

“And though the union is without intermediary, The manifold works that God does In heaven and earth are, however, Hidden from the spirit. For though God gives Himself as He is with a clear distinction, He gives Himself in the soul’s essence, Where the soul’s powers are unified Above reason And undergo God’s transformation In simplicity. In this place all is full And overflowing, for the spirit feels itself As one truth and one richness And one unity with God.”

John Ruysbroeck (1293–1381) Flemish mystic

The Little Book of Enlightenment (c. 1364)

God, Feeling, Soul

“More than anything else now, though, he wanted to save Darckense. He had seen too many dead, dry eyes, too much air-blackened blood, too much fly-blown flesh, to be able to relate such ghastly truths to the nebulous ideas of honor and tradition that people claimed they were fighting for. Only the well-being of one loved person seemed really worth fighting for now; it was all that seemed real, all that could save his sanity.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter I (p. 444).

Love, People, Idea, Fight

“The word of God is God, and therefore has to be revealed to you by God. When God’s Holy Spirit reveals to you the meaning of His word, then you will recognize the truth of His word.”

Bethany Kennedy Scanlon (1975)

Born of the Spirit (2009)

God

“5306. Truth makes the Devil blush.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

“I am not only convinced that what I say is false, but also that what one might say against it is false. Despite this, one must begin to talk about it. In such a case the truth lies not in the middle, but rather all around, like a sack, which, with each new opinion one stuffs into it, changes its form, and becomes more and more firm.”

Robert Musil (1880–1942) Austrian writer

Ich bin nicht nur überzeugt, dass das, was ich sage, falsch ist, sondern auch das, was man dagegen sagen wird. Trotzdem muss man anfangen, davon zu reden. Die Wahrheit liegt bei einem solchen Gegenstand nicht in der Mitte, sondern rundherum wie ein Sack, der mit jeder neuen Meinung, die man hineinstopft, seine Form ändert, aber immer fester wird!
Helpless Europe (1922)

Change, Falseness

“But if these truths to which the declaration refers have not before been adopted in their combined entirety by national authority, it is a fact that they had been long pondered and often expressed in political speculation. It is generally assumed that French thought had some effect upon our public mind during Revolutionary days. This may have been true. But the principles of our declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Reverend Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that 'The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

'The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance'.
1920s, Speech on the Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence (1926)

God, People, Appearance

“A man who for a long time has gone around hiding a secret becomes mentally deranged. At this point one would imagine that his secret would have to come out, but despite his derangement his soul still sticks to its hideout, and those around him become even more convinced that the false story he told to deceive them is the truth. He is healed of his insanity, knows everything that has gone on, and thereby perceives that nothing has been betrayed. Was this gratifying to him or not; he might wish to have disposed of his secret in his madness; it seems as if there were a fate which forced him to remain in his secret and would not let him go away from it. Or was it for the best, was there a guardian spirit who helped him keep his secret.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

(JP IV A81) 1843
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Fate, Secret, Soul, Imagination

“The Soviet Union does not allow any church of any kind to interfere with education, and religion is not taught in public schools. It seems to me that this is the greatest gift of the Russian Revolution to the modern world. Most educated modern men no longer believe in religious dogma. If questioned they will usually resort to double-talk before admitting the fact. But who today actually believes that this world is ruled and directed by a benevolent person of great power who, on humble appeal, will change the course of events at our request? Who believes in miracles? Many folk follow religious ceremonies and services and allow their children to learn fairy tales and so-called religious truth, which in time the children come to recognize as conventional lies told by their parents and teachers for the children's good. One can hardly exaggerate the moral disaster of the custom. We have to thank the Soviet Union for the courage to stop it.”

W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963) American sociologist, historian, activist and writer

The Autobiography of W.E. Burghardt Du Bois (1968), Ch. IV : The Soviet Union; he later states in Ch. XVI : My Character: "I think the greatest gift of the Soviet Union to modern civilization was the dethronement of the clergy and the refusal to let religion be taught in the public schools."

Men, Children, World, Education

“Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?”

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

Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (1866), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

“Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practised brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

§ 182
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down)

Life, Wisdom, World, Faith

“If this were true, the population of the world would be at a stand-still. In truth, the rate of birth is slightly in excess of death. I would suggest that the next edition of your poem should read: “Every moment dies a man, every moment 1 1/16 is born.” Strictly speaking, the actual figure is so long I cannot get it into a line, but I believe the figure 1 1/16 will be sufficiently accurate for poetry.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

New Scientist, 4 December 1958, pg.1428.
Comment in response to Alfred Tennyson’s poem Vision of Sin, which included the line Every moment dies a man, // every moment one is born.

Death, World, Birth, Reading

“[Behind Howard's stories] lurks a dark poetry and the timeless truth of dreams.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

~ Robert Bloch
About

Dreams

“The education of Peter III was undermined by a clash of unfortunate circumstances. I will relate what I have seen and heard, and that in itself will clarify many things. I saw Peter III for the first time when he was eleven years old, in Eutin at the home of his guardian, the Prince Bishop of Lübeck. Some months after the death of Duke Karl Friedrich, Peter III’s father, the Prince Bishop had in 1739 assembled all of his family at his home in Eutin to have his ward brought there. My grandmother, mother of the Prince Bishop, and my mother, sister of this same Prince, had come there from Hamburg with me. I was ten years old at the time…. It was then that I heard it said among this assembled family that the young duke was inclined to drink, that his attendants found it difficult to prevent him from getting drunk at meals, that he was restive and hotheaded, did not like his attendants and especially Brümmer, and that otherwise he showed vivacity, but had a delicate and sickly appearance. In truth, his face was pale in color and he seemed to be thin and of a delicate constitution. His attendants wanted to give this child the appearance of a mature man, and to this end they hampered and restrained him, which could only inculcate falseness in his conduct as well as his character.”

Catherine the Great (1729–1796) Empress of Russia

Memoirs

Death, Education, Family, Color

“This very real difference between GM plants and their conventional counterparts is one of the basic truths that biotech proponents have endeavoured to obscure. As part of the process, they portrayed the various concerns as merely the ignorant opinions of misinformed individuals – and derided them as not only unscientific, but anti-science.
They then set to work to convince the public and government officials, through the dissemination of false information, that there was an overwhelming expert consensus, based on solid evidence, that the new foods were safe. Yet this, as Druker points out, was clearly not true.
Druker describes how amazingly successful the biotech lobby has been – and the extent to which the general public and government decision makers have been hoodwinked by the clever and methodical twisting of the facts and the propagation of many myths. Moreover, it appears that a number of respected scientific institutions, as well as many eminent scientists, were complicit in this relentless spreading of disinformation.”

Jane Goodall (1934) British primatologist, ethologist, and anthropologist

Senior academic condemns ‘deluded’ supporters of GM food as being ‘anti-science’ and ignoring evidence of dangers (4 March 2015) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2979645/Senior-academic-condemns-deluded-supporters-GM-food-anti-science-ignoring-evidence-dangers.html#ixzz4BZ4NnMuY Foreword to Altered Genes, Twisted Truth (2015)

Food, Decision, Appearance, Science

“I entertain no doubts as to the truths of the transfinites, which I recognized with God’s help and which, in their diversity, I have studied for more than twenty years; every year, and almost every day brings me further in this science.”

Georg Cantor (1845–1918) mathematician, inventor of set theory

As quoted in Modern Mathematicians, (1995) by Harry Henderson. ~ ISBN 0816032351

God, Study, Science, Help

“Is there any doubt that drug addiction is an escape from an unbearable inner state - from a reality that one cannot deal with - from an atrophying mind one can never fully destroy? If Apollonian reason were unnatural to man, and Dionysian intuition brought him closer to nature and truth, the apostles of irrationality would not have to resort to drugs. Happy, self-confident men do not seek to get stoned. Drug addiction is the attempt to obliterate one's consciousness, the quest for a deliberately-induced insanity. As such, it is so obscene and evil that any doubt about the moral character of its practitioners is itself an obscenity.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Apollo and Dionysus (1969)

Men, Confidence, Nature, Reality

“I was brought up to believe that the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the creator of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me—I actually took my teachers seriously!”

Sinclair Lewis book Elmer Gantry

Elmer Gantry (1927)

God, Teachers, Training

“My closing statement to the senate and the council is…youth need art this truth is, not hard to swallow. I see many artistic people wallow in sorrow off belief. They aren't good enough to be. Give us a chance let us write our own histories. In a world conforming us instead of conforming for us. Kids ain't dumb just bored of the same old junk. Formulated highlight text, define learning. Is it confined to enclosed spaces eight hours a day? If it is I know why the caged bird sings.”

Marcus Orelias (1993) American actor, rapper, songwriter, author and entrepreneur

Fate
20s A Difficult Age (2017)

People, Youth, World, Art

“The significance of God, cause, number, substance or soul consists, as James asserts, in nothing but the tendency of the given concept to make us act or think. If the world should reach a point at which it ceases to care not only about such metaphysical entities but also about murders perpetrated behind closed frontiers or simply in the dark, one would have to conclude that the concepts of such murders have no meaning, that they represent no ‘distinct ideas’ or truths, since they do not make any ‘sensible difference to anybody.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

describing the pragmatist view, pp. 46-47.
Eclipse of Reason (1947)

God, World, Soul, Idea

“Men who have sacrifice their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view - which scorn ("fait fi", Fr.) virtue and altruism - regarded as insane or fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heros who do honour ("qui honorent", Fr.) humanity.”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), p. 38.

Men, Fools

“Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Die Wahrheit widerspricht unserer Natur, der Irrthum nicht, und zwar aus einem sehr einfachen Grunde: die Wahrheit fordert, daß wir uns für beschränkt erkennen follen, der Irrthum schmeichelt uns. wir seien auf ein- oder die andere Weise unbegränzt.
Maxim 310, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

Way, Error, Nature

“Should you be willing to read [ Xenophon's Anabasis] very carefully you shall discover how … to deceive one’s enemies to their harm and one’s friends to their advantage, and to speak the truth in a way that will not pain those who are needlessly disturbed by it.”

Dio Chrysostom (40–120) Greek philosopher

“On the Cultivation of Letters,” Discourses (18.16–17), quoted and translated by Bartlett, Xenophon: The Shorter Socratic Writings, 4

Pain, Way, Reading

“Neither is it accidental that the Upanishads contain no internal evidence as to when, where or by whom they were composed. Their very thesis is that we dwell in the midst of a timeless eternity. With everything so indissolubly united that particular areas or places are of no concern. Who might be the author of an idea or a way of communicating it must be of no importance whatsoever, since truth is truth.”

Robert T. Oliver (1909–2000) American academic

Communication and Culture In Ancient India & China (1971)

Way, Communication, Idea

“I had a story tell, a story that needed to be told so that people would know the truth.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

People

“Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. …She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, Sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/07/second-reading-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (7 June 1886) introducing the Home Rule Bill 1880s

Peace, Hope, Thinking, Past

“In the empty eyes of this child, he’d seen the withering of his own soul. The reflection had been unblemished, with no imperfections to challenge the truth of what he saw.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999), Chapter 11 (p. 341)

Soul

“This is the way of peace — overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, and hatred with love.”

Peace Pilgrim (1908–1981) American non-denominational spiritual teacher

The one-sentence peace message summarizing her ideas. Ch. 3 : The Pilgrimage
Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1982)

Love, Peace, Way, Evil

“Some men love truth so much that they seem to be in continual fear lest she should catch cold on over-exposure.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

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

Love, Men, Fear

“What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, October 8, 2002, in opposition to the resolution authorizing military force against Iraq

Love, Life, Family, Confidence

“The truthfulness which Jesus demands from his followers is the self-abnegation which does not hide sin. Nothing is then hidden, everything is brought forth to the light of day. In this question of truthfulness, what matters first and last is that a man’s whole being should be exposed, his whole evil laid bare in the sight of God. But sinful men do not like this sort of truthfulness.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Truthfulness, p. 138.

Men, God, Question, Light

“Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?
Has the state no controul, no decent awe,
While each with each in madd'ning orgies vie
Pandars to lust and licens'd blasphemy?
Can senates hear without a kindred rage?
Oh may a poet's lightning blast the page,
Nor with the bolt of Nemesis in vain
Supply the laws, that wake not to restrain!”

Matthew Lewis (writer) (1775–1818) English novelist and dramatist

Thomas James Mathias The Pursuits of Literature, revised edition (1797), Dialogue 4, line 316.
Criticism

Law, Sleep, Rage

“Two people sat talking in a small room for several weeks, and things started happening. They began thinking about each other; one would dream about the other; they copied each other's mannerisms. What was it really all about? She liked to think she had a firm hold on the reins at all times, but the truth was that often she was just along for the ride.”

Lisa Alther (1944) Novelist

Other Women

People, Dreams, Thinking, Time

“Readers of histories and novels can hardly fail to be struck by their similarities. There are many histories that could pass for novels, and many novels that could pass for histories, considered in purely formal (or, I should say, formalist) terms. Viewed simply as verbal artifacts histories and novels are indistinguishable from one another. We cannot easily distinguish between them on formal grounds unless we approach them with specific preconceptions about the kinds of truths that each is supposed to deal in. But the aim of the writer of a novel must be the same as that of the writer of a history.”

Hayden White (1928–2018) American historian

"The fictions of factual representation"

History

“Our love grows soft if it is not strengthened by truth, and our truth grows hard if it is not softened by love.”

John Stott (1921–2011) British theologian

Bible Speaks Today commentary, p. 207; On 2 John

Love

“Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand. It is no accident that the two most successful economies in the world, both overall and specifically in terms of job creation—those of the United States and Japan—have the lowest level of tax as a proportion of GDP. Reductions in taxation motivate new businesses and improve incentives at work. They are a principal engine of the enterprise culture, on which our future prosperity and employment opportunities depend.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1986/mar/18/income-tax in the House of Commons (18 March 1986)

World, Motivation, Business, Success

“Kuhn acknowledges having used the term "paradigm" in two different meanings. In the first one, "paradigm" designates what the members of a certain scientific community have in common, that is to say, the whole of techniques, patents and values shared by the members of the community. In the second sense, the paradigm is a single element of a whole, say for instance Newton’s Principia, which, acting as a common model or an example… stands for the explicit rules and thus defines a coherent tradition of investigation. Thus the question is for Kuhn to investigate by means of the paradigm what makes possible the constitution of what he calls "normal science". That is to say, the science which can decide if a certain problem will be considered scientific or not. Normal science does not mean at all a science guided by a coherent system of rules, on the contrary, the rules can be derived from the paradigms, but the paradigms can guide the investigation also in the absence of rules. This is precisely the second meaning of the term "paradigm", which Kuhn considered the most new and profound, though it is in truth the oldest.”

Giorgio Agamben (1942) Italian philosopher

Communication, Question, Problem, Sense

“Say: All matters must be referred to the Book of God; I am indeed the First to believe in God and in His signs; I am the One Who divulgeth and proclaimeth the Truth and I have been invested with every excellent title of God, the Mighty, the Incomparable. Verily I have attained the Day of the First Manifestation and by the bidding of the Lord and as a token of His grace, I shall attain the Day of the Latter Manifestation”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

Tablet to the First Letter of the Living

God, Books

“The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Source: Short fiction, To Rescue Tanelorn... (1962), p. 474

Lie

“The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented. It's a vast, sentimentalizing structure that reassures the reader, and at every point, offers the comfort of secure moral frameworks and recognizable characters. This whole notion was advanced by Mary McCarthy and many others years ago, that the main function of the novel was to carry out a kind of moral criticism of life. But the writer has no business making moral judgments or trying to set himself up as a one-man or one-woman magistrate's court. I think it's far better, as Burroughs did and I've tried to do in my small way, to tell the truth.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"J.G. Ballard on William S. Burrough's Naked Truth" by Richard Kadrey in Salon (2 September 1997) http://web.archive.org/web/20000511215816/http://www.salon.com/sept97/wsb2970902.html

Life, Way, Business, Thinking

“The term fuzzy logic is used in this paper to describe an imprecise logical system, FL, in which the truth-values are fuzzy subsets of the unit interval with linguistic labels such as true, false, not true, very true, quite true, not very true and not very fake, etc…. As a consequence, the truth tables and the rules of inference in fuzzy logic are (i) inexact and (ii) dependent on the meaning associated with the primary truth-value true as well as the modifiers very quite.”

George Klir (1932–2016) American computer scientist

Lotfi Asker Zadeh, George Klir, Bo Yuan (1996) Fuzzy Sets, Fuzzy Logic, and Fuzzy Systems: Selected Papers. p. 238.

Dependency, Falseness

“Colin Powell said recently that he was disappointed that some of the intelligence on Iraq's WMD program was "inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading." That, of course, is the nature of human intelligence. The issue is not whether the source of the intelligence information was telling the truth, but whether George Tenet, Colin Powell, and President George W. Bush believed that the information was true. I believe they did. I know I did. And I do not regret my role in disarming Iraq and removing the Baathist regime.”

Tommy Franks (1945) United States Army general

Source: American Soldier (2004), p. 562

Disappointment, Intelligence, Nature

“The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 28, June 3, 1943.

People, Idea, Effort

“Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. … President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world. … No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are — a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.”

John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States

Official statement: "SASC Chairman John Mccain on Trump-Putin Meeting" (16 July 2018) https://www.mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=press-releases&id=A99FDA26-673D-4560-B4EA-5AEDF0685EC5 2010s, 2018

People, World, Hope, Home

“Have we not the right to our own views, and own interpretations, and own creeds, and own Truths equal to those that proceeded us? Must we forever wear the cast-off garments of past ages?”

Benjamin Fish Austin (1850–1933) Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spiritualist

Sermon (1899)

Age, Past

“Poetry is when words are robbed of their attributed truth.”

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 261 (2003)

“Art is magic. So say the surrealists. But how is it magic? In its metaphysical development? Or does some final transformation culminate in a magic reality? In truth, the latter is impossible without the former. If creation is not magic, the outcome cannot be magic. To worship the product and ignore its development leads to dilettantism and reaction. Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

'Search for the Real in the Visual Arts', p. 40
Search for the Real and Other Essays (1948)

Art, Reality

“Lord Jesus Christ, our foolish minds are weak; they are more than willing to be drawn—and there is so much that wants to draw us to itself. There is pleasure with its seductive power, the multiplicity with its bewildering distractions, the moment with its infatuating importance and the conceited laboriousness of busyness and the careless time-wasting of light-mindedness and the gloomy brooding of heavy-mindedness—all this will draw us away from ourselves to itself in order to deceive us. But you, who are truth, only you, our Savior and Redeemer, can truly draw a person to yourself, which you have promised to do—that you will draw all to yourself. Then may God grant that by repenting we may come to ourselves, so that you, according to your Word, can draw us to yourself—from on high, but through lowliness and abasement.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, Practice in Christianity (September 1850), p. 157

God, Pleasure, Light, Time

“Out of a desire that there may be a progress in these directions, with all that such progress means, this great Society continues its efforts. It recognizes that whoever has an evil tongue cannot have a pure mind. We read that 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh'. This is a truth which is worthy of much thought. He who gives license to his tongue only discloses the contents of his own mind. By the excess of his words he proclaims his lack of discipline. By his very violence he shows his weakness. The youth or man who by disregarding this principle thinks he is displaying his determination and resolution and emphasizing his statements is in reality only revealing an intellectual poverty, a deficiency in self-control and self-respect, a want of accurate thinking and of spiritual insight, which cannot come save from a reverence for the truth. There are no human actions which are unimportant, none to which we can be indifferent. All of them lead either towards destruction and death, or towards construction and life.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Authority and Religious Liberty (1924)

Life, Death, Youth, Thinking

“Nor do I sing for courtesy's sake
with a taste for praising, but to make
pure truths known about my former times.
Would to God they were mere dreams.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Nem eu delicadezas vou cantando
Co'o gosto do louvor, mas explicando
Puras verdades já por mim passadas.
Oxalá foram fábulas sonhadas!
"Vinde cá, meu tão certo secretário", trans. by Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 303
Lyric poetry, Hymns (canções)

God, Dreams, Singing, Time

“The essence of Hindu Dharma is not ‘tolerance’ or ‘equal respect for all religious’ but satya, truth. The problem with Christianity and Islam is superficially their intolerance and fanaticism. But this intolerance is a consequence of these religions’ untruthfulness. If your belief system is based on delusions, you have to pre-empt rational enquiry into it and shield it from contact with more sustainable thought systems. The fundamental problem with monotheistic religions is not that they are intolerant but that they are untrue”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

Asatya or Anrita
In Sita Ram Goel: Jesus Christ - An Artifice for Aggression (1994)
1990s

Religion, Problem

“Hatred of the Jews has changed form but it still remains. If not racial superiority, then religious superiority is the order of the day. The world's indifference in light of this hatred has also remained. The world has very quickly become accustomed to hearing declarations only 65 years after the Holocaust, declarations of intent to annihilate millions of Jews – and the world continues to act in the same manner. The hesitancy of enlightened countries to act against extreme regimes which threaten us and threaten world peace – this too has not changed. The only thing that has truly changed is our ability and our determination to act to defend ourselves and prevent another Holocaust. This truth is a source of heavy and constant responsibility – to ensure by any means necessary the future and security of the State of Israel against those who seek our destruction. This is the last will and testament of the six million, our brothers and sisters who perished in the Holocaust and it is our duty – and we will carry it out.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the opening of the permanent exhibition in Block 27 at Auschwitz-Birkenau in June 2013 http://www.netanyahu.org.il/en/news/538-pm-benjamin-netanyahu-s-speech-at-the-opening-of-the-permanent-exhibition-in-block-27-at-auschwitz-birkenau. 2010s, 2013

World, Peace, Sister, Light

“Minds are in limited supply, and each mind has a limited capacity for memes, and hence there is considerable competition among memes for entry in as many minds as possible. This competition is the major selective force in the memosphere, and, just as in the biosphere, the challenge has been met with great ingenuity. For instance, whatever virtues (from our perspective) the following memes have, they have in common the property of having phenotypic expressions that tend to make their own replication more likely by disabling or preempting the environmental forces that would tend to extinguish them: the meme for faith, which discourages the exercise of the sort of critical judgment that might decide that the idea of faith was, all things considered a dangerous idea; the meme for tolerance or free speech; the meme of including in a chain letter a warning about the terrible fates of those who have broken the chain in the past; the conspiracy theory meme, which has a built-in response to the objection that there is no good evidence of a conspiracy: "Of course not — that's how powerful the conspiracy is!" Some of these memes are "good" perhaps and others "bad"; what they have in common is a phenotypic effect that systematically tends to disable the selective forces arrayed against them. Other things being equal, population memetics predicts that conspiracy theory memes will persist quite independently of their truth, and the meme for faith is apt to secure its own survival, and that of the religious memes that ride piggyback on it, in even the most rationalistic environments. Indeed, the meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes best when it is outnumbered by rationalistic memes; in an environment with few skeptics, the meme for faith tends to fade from disuse.”

Daniel Dennett book Consciousness Explained

Consciousness Explained (1991)

Fate, Faith, Exercises, Idea

“Just as many churches don’t want to be seen as rejecting science, neither do they wish to lag too far behind public morality, and so they often tweak their religious “truths” to reflect the zeitgeist.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 71

Science

“Never knowing
Shocking but we're nothing
We're just moments
We're Clever but we're clueless
We're just human
Amusing but confusing
But the truth is
All we got is questions
We'll Never Know.”

Jack Johnson (musician) (1975) American musician

Never Know.
Song lyrics, In Between Dreams (2005)

Question

“What President Obama is talking about—this idea that all faiths are equal, especially Islam and Christianity, and that all people serve God in some way—is a dangerous misconception. It is increasingly becoming common in our pluralistic and inclusive culture. But nothing could be farther from the truth. A quick study of God’s Word and key Christian doctrines makes it clear that Islam and Christianity are utterly incompatible.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

President Obama Speech: Christians and Muslims Worship the Same God? https://answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2016/02/04/president-obama-speech-christians-and-muslims-worship-same-god/, Around the World with Ken Ham (February 4, 2016) Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

God, People, Faith, Way

“I myself have no doubt in the past tended to appear to many to be more concerned with the creation of wealth than with its distribution. I must confess that there is a degree of truth in this, but to the extent that it is true, it has been because of my conviction that the rapid growth of the economy, and the pressure that comes with it on demand for labour, both produces a rapid and substantial redistribution of income directly of itself and also makes it possible to assist more generously those who are not, from misfortune temporary or permanent, sharing in the general advance. The history of our last fifteen years or so demonstrates this conclusively.”

John James Cowperthwaite (1915–2006) British colonial administrator

February 26, 1969, page 104.
Official Report of Proceedings of the Hong Kong Legislative Council

History, Appearance, Past, Wealth

Quotes about the truth page 57

Quotes about the truth
page 57