Approximate Truth Quotes & Sayings

within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities. — Anthony Daniels

He may actually have been existing in the past and approximating a conceivable future, which brought even the assumption of his immediate perceptions as being in the present into doubt. And thus, he couldn't - beyond a hint of skepticism - say that he truly existed right now and in this moment, but instead it seemed more rational to assume that he simply existed and nothing more. — Ashim Shanker

To say that the humanities can be a path to truth itself is to challenge one of our most closely held beliefs. We live not only in a scientific world, but also in a scientistic one: a world that thinks that science - empirical, objective, quantifiable - is the exclusive form of knowledge, and that other methods of inquiry are valid only insofar as they approximate its methods. But the humanities and science face in opposite directions. They don't just work in different ways; they work on different things. — William Deresiewicz

Every discourse is an approximate answer: but it is of small consequence, that we do not get it into verbs and nouns, whilst it abides for contemplation forever. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We use our gadgets for distraction and entertainment. We use them to avoid work while giving the impression that we're actually working hard. — Meghan Daum

Truth is for the gods; from our human point of view, it is an ideal, towards which we can approximate, but which we cannot hope to reach. — Bertrand Russell

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real. — Idries Shah

If you get a chance to act in a room that somebody else has paid rent for, then you're given a free chance to practice your craft. — Philip Seymour Hoffman

One can never truly savor success until first tasting adversity. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

When we talk about books ... we are talking about our approximate recollections of books ... What we preserve of the books we read - whether we take notes or not, and even if we sincerely believe we remember them faithfully - is in truth no more than a few fragments afloat, like so many islands, on an ocean of oblivion ... We do not retain in memory complete books identical to the books remembered by everyone else, but rather fragments surviving from partial readings, frequently fused together and further recast by our private fantasies. ... What we take to be the books we have read is in fact an anomalous accumulation of fragments of texts, reworked by our imagination and unrelated to the books of others, even if these books are materially identical to ones we have held in our hands. — Pierre Bayard

I doubt if wickedness does half as much harm as sectarianism, whether it be the sectarianism of the church or of dissent, the sectarianism whose virtue is condescension, or the sectarianism whose vice is pride. Division has done more to hide Christ from the view of men, than all the infidelity that has ever been spoken. It is the half-Christian clergy of every denomination that are the main cause of the so-called failure of the Church of Christ. — George MacDonald

The enemy gate is down. — Orson Scott Card

If a small town doesn't have a laundromat, and if you open one up, you can be pretty confident you'll have customers. If your laundromat is unique in any way, then perhaps you can scale it. — James Altucher

Simplicity and beauty are the signs not of truth but of a well-constructed approximate model of a limited domain of phenomena. — Lee Smolin

A great man, who was convinced that the truths of political and moral science are capable of the same certainty as those that form the system of physical science, even in those branches like astronomy that seem to approximate mathematical certainty. He cherished this belief, for it led to the consoling hope that humanity would inevitably make progress toward a state of happiness and improved character even as it has already done in its knowledge of the truth. — Nicolas De Caritat, Marquis De Condorcet