“All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.”
Source: September 1, 1939 (1939), Lines 78–88; for a 1955 anthology text the poet changed this line to "We must love one another and die" to avoid what he regarded as a falsehood in the original.
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
W. H. Auden 122
Anglo-American poet 1907–1973Related quotes

“Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.”
As quoted in News of the Universe : Poems of Twofold Consciousness (1995) by Robert Bly, p. 125

Christopher Hitchens vs. Alister McGrath, 11/10/2007 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq-KiDdYvsY&t=15m17s
2000s, 2007
Context: On our integrity, our basic integrity, knowing right from wrong and being able to choose a right action over a wrong one, I think one must repudiate the claim that one doesn't have this moral discrimination innately, that, no, it must come only from the agency of a celestial dictatorship which one must love and simultaneously fear. What is it like to lie to children and tell them that they have an authority, that they must love and be terrified of it at the same time. What's that like? I want to know. And that we don't have an innate sense of right and wrong, children don't have an innate sense of fairness and decency, which of course they do. What is it like?

1960s, October surprise speech (1968)

"Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?", Criticism and the growth of knowledge edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (1970)
“One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)”
Source: The Outcast

“Work and pray,
Live on hay.
You’ll get pie
In the sky
When you die—
It’s a lie!”
“Bread Overhead” (p. 121); originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1958; alluding to the song The Preacher and the Slave.
Short Fiction, A Pail of Air (1964)