“To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.”

— Harvey Mansfield

How to Understand Politics: What the Humanities Can Say to Science (2007)
Context: Literature... seeks to entertain — and why is this?... The reason, fundamentally, is that literature knows something that science does not: the human resistance to hearing the truth. Science does not inform scientists of this basic fact.... The wisdom of literature arises mainly from its attention to this point. To overcome the resistance to truth, literature makes use of fictions that are images of truth.

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Harvey Mansfield 16

Author, professor 1932

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