“Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.”

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI", in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

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 "Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet h…" by Stanisław Lem?
Stanisław Lem photo
Stanisław Lem 74
Polish science fiction author 1921–2006

Related quotes

George Chapman photo

“And for the authentical truth of either person or actions, who (worth the respecting) will expect it in a poem, whose subject is not truth, but things like truth?”

Poor envious souls they are that cavil at truth's want in these natural fictions; material instruction, elegant and sententious excitation to virtue, and deflection from her contrary, being the soul, limbs, and limits of an authentical tragedy.
The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois (1613)

George Chapman photo

“Live authentically. Why would you continue to compromise something that's beautiful to create something that is fake?”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 38

Oliver Lodge photo
Prevale photo

“Spontaneity is the privilege of an authentic person.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: La spontaneità è il privilegio di una persona autentica.
Source: prevale.net

Mario Vargas Llosa photo

“Political correctness is the enemy of freedom because it rejects honesty and authenticity. We have to tackle it as the distortion of the truth.”

Mario Vargas Llosa (1936) Peruvian writer, politician, journalist, and essayist

Interview https://elpais.com/elpais/2018/02/27/inenglish/1519736544_699462.html, El País, 27/02/2018

Will Rogers photo

“Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.”

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

Nationally syndicated column number 31, A Few Shots of Scopolamin (15 July 1923), after meeting Robert E. House, who had proposed the use of scopolamine as a truth serum, in The Use of Scopolamine in Criminology (1922).
Weekly columns
Context: See they conducted experiments on convicts... I don't know on what grounds they reason a man in jail is a bigger liar than one out of jail... The chances are telling the truth is what got him there... It would be a big aid to humanity, but it will never be, for already the politicians are up in arms against it... It would wreck the very foundation on which our political government is run... If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics … Even the ministers are denouncing it now … Humanity is not yet ready for either real truth or real harmony.

“Sentences are not as such either true or false”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

Austin (1962) Sense and Sensibilia p. 111.

Related topics