Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6
Context: American traditions and the American ethic require us to be truthful, but the most important reason is that truth is the best propaganda and lies are the worst. To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; to be credible we must be truthful. It is as simple as that.
“One doesn't bother to believe the credible: the credible is believed already, by definition. There's no adventure of the mind.”
1:313
"Quotes", Late Notebooks, 1982–1990: Architecture of the Spiritual World (2002)
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Northrop Frye 137
Canadian literary critic and literary theorist 1912–1991Related quotes
“The liar wants to be believed, but lying undermines the foundation for credibility.”
Source: Propaganda & The Ethics Of Persuasion (2002), Chapter Four, Ethics And Propaganda, p. 149
Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6
“We don't believe in credibility, because we know that we're fucking incredible.”
" We're From America http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/marilynmanson/werefromamerica.html".
2000s, The High End of Low (2009)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 605.
The Guardian, "One last warning from the man who made an enemy of Bush", June 11, 2003 http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974970,00.html
https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/902373016818126849 (August 30, 2017)
2017
As quoted in "Master of the Secret World: John le Carré on Deception, Storytelling and American Hubris" by Andrew Ross, in Salon (21 October 1996); also in Conversations with John le Carré (2004) edited by Matthew Joseph Bruccoli and Judith Baughman, p. 140