“If we believe that there are some irreducibly normative truths, we might be believing what we ought to believe. If there are such truths, one of these truths would be that we ought to believe that there are such truths. If instead we believe that there are no such truths, we could not be believing what we ought to believe. If there were no such truths, there would be nothing that we ought to believe.”

— Derek Parfit , book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 619

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Derek Parfit 24

British philosopher 1942–2017

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Let Me be a Woman

“To be persuasive, We must be believable,
To be believable, We must be credible,
To be credible, We must be truthful.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

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.

“The truth is the truth. What changes is what we know about it and what we're willing to believe.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

“We believe whenever we don't know the truth.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“We believe that Marxism-Leninism is an incontestable truth.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Speech pronounced in Havana (13 March 1962) http://www.cuba.cu/gobierno/discursos/1962/esp/f130362e.html

“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.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

Speaking as the Director of USIA, in testimony before a Congressional Committee (May 1963) http://pdaa.publicdiplomacy.org/?page_id=6

“When we believe ourselves in possession of the only truth, we are likely to be indifferent to common everyday truths.”

Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher

Section 83
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. … We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. … Which deception is more dangerous?”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Works of Love (1847), p. 5

“We humans are willing to believe anything rather than the truth.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Variant: We are willing to believe anything other than the truth.
Source: The Shadow of the Wind

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