“If appearances are deceitful, then they do not deserve any confidence when they assert what appears to them to be true.”

—  Diogenes Laërtius

Pyrrho, 11.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 9: Uncategorized philosophers and Skeptics

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

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "If appearances are deceitful, then they do not deserve any confidence when they assert what appears to them to be true." by Diogenes Laërtius?
Diogenes Laërtius photo
Diogenes Laërtius107
biographer of ancient Greek philosophers 180–240

Related quotes

Glen Cook photo

“Half of confidence is the appearance of confidence.”

Glen Cook Dreams of Steel

Source: Dreams of Steel (1990), Chapter 17 (p. 287)

Emil M. Cioran photo

“When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

The New Gods (1969)

C.G. Jung photo

“A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Tennessee Williams photo

“Most of the confidence which I appear to feel, especially when influenced by noon wine, is only a pretense.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

"I am widely regarded as the ghost of a writer," (1977), from New Selected Essays: Where I Live, ed. John S. Bak and John Lahr (New Directions Publishing, 2009)

“Not everything that appears true is true.”

Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer

"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995)
Context: Not everything that appears true is true. The ACLU is devoted to some very controversial principles — like the principle that everyone who is arrested should enjoy the same constitutional rights, regardless of their alleged crime or their character. We don't take that position to irritate people; we take that position because we believe in it. We believe in it, in part, in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, because the rights of each one of us are co-extensive with the rights of everyone who is arrested and prosecuted in the criminal courts. If we all don't enjoy the same rights, then no one enjoys any rights at all; some of us merely enjoy privilege.

Friedrich Hayek photo

“The illiterate expression ‘given data’ constantly recurs in Lange. It appears to have an irresistable attraction to mathematical economists because it doubly assures them that they know what they do not know. It seems to bewitch them into making assertions about the real world for which they have no empirical justification whatever.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

1980s and later, "Two Pages of Fiction" (1982)

“People more readily credit men with leadership ability and more readily accept men as leaders. What is assertive in a man can appear abrasive in a woman, and female leaders risk appearing too feminine or not feminine enough.”

Barbara Kellerman (1939) American academic

Source: Women and leadership, 2007, p. 7

“Adeimantus, in what amounts to an accusation of Socrates, asserts that the philosophers appear to be either useless or vicious. Plato, as I have suggested, teaches that ultimately this is an appearance that cannot be reversed, and this insures the philosophers’ permanent marginality. They appear as useless because they are. They are neither artisans, nor statesmen, nor rhetoricians. They are idlers who contribute nothing to security or posterity. Their peculiar contemplative pleasures are not accessible to the majority of mankind, and they do not provide for the popular pleasures as do the poets.”

Allan Bloom (1930–1992) American philosopher, classicist, and academician

“Commerce and Culture,” p. 285.
Giants and Dwarfs (1990)

Samuel Johnson photo

“My friend was of opinion that when a man of rank appeared in that character [as an author], he deserved to have his merit handsomely allowed.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

May 1781
Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), Vol IV

Related topics