Quotes & Sayings About Untruth

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

It is of great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible; and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and a third time, till at length it becomes habitual. — Thomas Jefferson

Truth had a way of coming out on top - and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day. — Alexander McCall Smith

Now, helpless in the hollow of An unarmorial age, a trough Of smoke in slow suspended skeins Above their scrap of history, Only an attitude remains: Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone finality They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. — Philip Larkin

It is not to be understood that I am with him [Jesus] in all his doctrines. I am a Materialist, he takes the side of spiritualism; he preaches the efficacy of repentance toward forgiveness of sin. I require a counterpoise of good works to redeem it ... Among the sayings & discourses imputed to him by his biographers, I find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence: and others again of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism, and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being.
[Letter to William Short, 13 April 1820] — Thomas Jefferson

It is not honest inquiry that makes anarchy; but it is error, insincerity, half belief and untruth that make it. — Thomas Carlyle

But the lie had to be a good one, because if your lie is badly done it makes everyone feel wretched, liar and lied-to alike plunged into the deepest lackadaisy, and everyone just feels like going into the other room and drinking a glass of water, or whatever is available there, whereas if you can lie really well then get dynamite results, 35 percent report increased intellectual understanding, awareness, insight, 40 percent report more tolerance, acceptance of others, liking for self, 29 percent report they receive more personal and more confidential information from people and that others become more warm and supportive toward them
all in consequence of a finely orchestrated, carefully developed untruth. — Donald Barthelme

Truth does not become untruth simply because its existence upsets the scion of a High House. — Jim Butcher

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk. — Mahatma Gandhi

My rules are simple and clear. We must dispense with insincere politeness- that vapid veneer of untruth that smothers London drawing rooms. Our well-mannered social deceit must not die a private death but a court-ordered hanging in the public square. The archaic animal that is left will be a dangerous and hot-blooded thing. Unruly and impossible to predict. But alive. — Priya Parmar

Washington culture has always had a difficult time acknowledging untruth. — Timothy Noah

If you take part of the truth, and try to make that part of the truth, all of the truth, then that part of the truth becomes an untruth. — Adrian Rogers

Don't cry for someone who would love smiling when your tears are flowing. — Michael Bassey Johnson

There is a lot of social photography being done now to point to the untruth of photography. It's getting very dull now. So, okay photography doesn't tell the truth. So what? Everyone has known this forever. — Abelardo Morell

Don't lies in the end put us on the path to truth? And don't my stories, true or false, point to the same conclusion? Don't they have the same meaning? So, what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in either case, they signify what I have been and what I am? One can sometimes see more clearly in a person who is lying than in one who is telling the truth. Like light, truth dazzles. Untruth, on the other hand, is a beautiful dusk that enhances everything. — Albert Camus

Sometimes accepting truth as truth is untruth. — Santosh Kalwar

Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd. — Soren Kierkegaard

No,' said the priest, 'we must not accept everything is true, we must only accept it is necessary.'
'A dismal thought,' said K., 'it makes untruth into a universal principle. — Franz Kafka

A crowd in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction. — Soren Kierkegaard

Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves. — Norman Tebbit

A man of God never strives after untruth and therefore he can never lose hope. — Mahatma Gandhi

Like Karl Kraus, [Wittgenstein] was seldom pleased by what he saw of the institutions of men, and the idiom of the passerby mostly offended his ear particularly when they happened to speak philosophically; and like Karl Kraus, he suspected that the institutions could not but be corrupt if the idiom of the race was confused, presumptuous, and vacuous, a fabric of nonsense, untruth, deception, and self-deception. — Thomas Szasz

Where there are two people, there is untruth. — Soren Kierkegaard

Ahimsa is the very definition of woman and there is no place for untruth in her heart. If she is true to herself she is no longer Abala
the weak, but she is Sabala
the strong ... — Mahatma Gandhi

There is one domain in which untruth is insupportable, that field of the human soul's endeavor of which Truth is the very substance and being, - religion — Alvin Boyd Kuhn

In a vacuum all photons travel at the same speed. They slow down when travelling through air or water or glass. Photons of different energies are slowed down at different rates. If Tolstoy had known this, would he have recognised the terrible untruth at the beginning of Anna Karenina? 'All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own particular way.' In fact it's the other way around. Happiness is a specific. Misery is a generalisation. People usually know exactly why they are happy. They very rarely know why they are miserable. — Jeanette Winterson

The History of Truth

In that ago when being was believing,
Truth was the most of many credibles,
More first, more always, than a bat-winged lion,
A fish-tailed dog or eagle-headed fish,
The least like mortals, doubted by their deaths.

Truth was their model as they strove to build
A world of lasting objects to believe in,
Without believing earthenware and legend,
Archway and song, were truthful or untruthful:
The Truth was there already to be true.

This while when, practical like paper-dishes,
Truth is convertible to kilowatts,
Our last to do by is an anti-model,
Some untruth anyone can give the lie to,
A nothing no one need believe is there. — W. H. Auden

Care-charmer Sleep, son of the sable Night, Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, Relieve my languish and restore the light; With dark forgetting of my care return. And let the day be time enough to mourn The shipwreck of my ill adventured youth: Let waking eyes suffice to wail their scorn Without the torment of the night's untruth. — Samuel Daniel

If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. — Theodor Adorno

Spirit is the only truth within us, the rest is all untruth. — Nirmala Srivastava

A new untruth is better than an old truth. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

What may appear as the truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appeared to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. — Mahatma Gandhi

Seek truth! Seek truth in the darkness, under the oceans, above the clouds; seek it everywhere and every time! Stop deceiving yourself with untruth, seek truth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Of all faults the one she most despised in others was the want of bravery; the meanness of heart which leads to untruth. — Elizabeth Gaskell

Uh-huh, she said. He was beginning to recognize that was her way of indicating untruth. — Kresley Cole

The humorous writer professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your kindness
your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture ... He takes upon himself to be the week-day preacher. — Mark Twain

The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt. — Kenneth L. Pike

'Twould be easy to say 'tis a gift, but 'twould also be an untruth. Beauty and compliments are always to be found in the truth, when not maliciously brought to light. — Sam Knight

Dysfunction is a true reaction to untruth. — Lemn Sissay

Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth. — Soren Kierkegaard

The Big Lie is a major untruth uttered frequently by leaders as a means of duping and controlling the constituency. — Adolf Hitler

The majority is almost always wrong. The crowd is untruth. Scapegoating is demonic. — Brian Zahnd

What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go? — Dorothy Dunnett

I am not even an atheist so much as I am an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief is positively harmful. Reviewing the false claims of religion, I do not wish, as some sentimental materialists affect to wish, that they were true. I do not envy believers their faith. I am relieved to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faithful affirmed was actually the case. — Christopher Hitchens

Some persons are exaggerators by temperament. They do not mean untruth, but their feelings are strong, and their imaginations vivid, so that their statements are largely discounted by those of calm judgment and cooler temperament. They do not realize that we always weaken what we exaggerate. — Tryon Edwards

Pigs are dirty, but I will tell you something dirtier: Liars! Untruth always smells like rotten garbage! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The evolution of life, and the evolutionary origin of mankind, are scientifically established as firmly and completely as any historical event not witnessed by human observers. Any concession to anti-evolutionists, suggesting that there are scientific reasons to doubt the facticity of evolution, would be propagating a plain untruth. — Theodosius Dobzhansky

When the tempter me pursueth
With the sins of all my youth,
And half damns me with untruth,
Sweet Spirit, comfort me! — Robert Herrick

We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth. — Swami Vivekananda

As the virtual world of electronic communication becomes the world many of us inhabit all the time, in turning to imaginative literature we may not be seeking mere reassurance nor be impelled by mere nostalgia. To enter with heart and mind into the world of the imagination may be to head deliberately and directly toward, or back toward, engagement with the real world. In one of T. S. Eliot's poems a bird sings, "Mankind cannot bear very much reality." I've always thought that bird was mistaken, or was talking only about some people. I find it amazing how much of the real world most of us can endure. Not only endure, but need, desire, crave. Reality is life. Where we suffocate is in the half-life of unreality, untruth, imitation, fakery, the almost-true that is not true. To be human is to live both within and beyond the narrow band of what-happens-now, in the vast regions of the past and the possible, the known and the imagined: our real world, our true Now. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Somehow, it bothered her watching Garth's charm directed so effectively at another. Could he convince her so easily of an untruth? — Colleen Chen

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. — George Orwell

They who imagine truth in untruth and see untruth in truth will never arrive at the truth. — Gautama Buddha

In the future, all religions will sink, only God will remain stand still! The untruth can survive only for a while and then it sinks! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism. — Mahatma Gandhi

I think that if there are problems in journalism they're created by journalists ... the trivialisation of the news and the sort of snyed, cynical allowance of untruth to be in a newspaper because it might be titillating. — Russell Crowe

A myth ... is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension. It is a comparison that helps us understand, by analogy, some aspect of our mysterious selves. A myth, in this way of thinking, is not an untruth but a way of reaching a profound truth. — Christopher Vogler

A half-truth masquerading as a whole truth becomes a complete untruth — J.I. Packer

The United Nations emerged as a temple of official good intentions, a place where governments might - without abating their transgressions - go to church; a place made remote - by agreed untruth and procedural complexity, and by tedium itself - from the risk of intense public involvement. — Shirley Hazzard

A little bird whispers in my ear: Be fair! Nobody, no country, has a monopoly of untruth. — Salman Rushdie

Do not discuss the religious matters with people; do not waste your valuable time to discuss the untruth! Your time is short; spend it for the science and the art! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

You care for nothing, Eliza." "That, Tomas, is an untruth. I care very deeply for myself and quite possibly a small amount for you. I have not yet decided on that matter. — Mark Tufo

Enlightenment is a destructive process. It
has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing
through the facade of pretence. It's the
complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true. — Adyashanti

When there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or himsa (violence). Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end. But it may be freely admitted that the Gita was not written to establish ahimsa. It was an accepted and primary duty even before the Gita age. The Gita had to deliver the message of renunciation of fruit. This is clearly brought out as early as the second chapter. 26. But if the Gita believed in ahimsa or it was included in desirelessness, why did the author take a warlike illustration? When the Gita was written, although people believed in ahimsa, wars were not only not taboo, but nobody observed the contradiction between them and ahimsa. — Mahatma Gandhi

I don't want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth and licentious, usurious economics. — George Jackson

President Bush's 'Mission Accomplished,' declaration from the USS Abraham Lincoln in 2003 was not just premature, but an untruth. — Greg Barron

Real racist jokes or sexist jokes aren't funny - not because they're offensive, but because they're not true. As soon as a joke is based on an untruth, it's not funny. — Ricky Gervais

Tom Wright has reminded us, "There is a persistent untruth which has made its way into the popular imagination in our day: that Christianity means closing off your mind, ceasing all serious thought, and living in a shallow fantasy world divorced from the solid truths of 'real life. ' " "But," he continues, "the truth is that genuine Christianity opens the mind [as Paul has been saying throughout this letter (to the Ephesians), and in its companion piece, the letter to Colossae], so that it can grasp truth at deeper and deeper levels."[11] — Malcolm Jeeves

True knowledge is not to be had solely through a combat against error, bad faith and untruth, but more generally, through a combat against the illusions inherent in the sensible world. — Luc Ferry

Say somebody shot somebody ... We ... are so concerned about whether this evidence was admitted properly ... (and) not recognize the intrusion into our sacred individuality that is being caused every time people turn on the faucet? ... I am astounded by how much untruth has been officially promulgated (pro fluoridation). — John Flaherty

A surfeit of information often hides an untruth, he said, with annoying clarity. — Jasper Fforde

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live - that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I know what I am, Savannah, a monster such as the human world cannot conceive. But I have always had honor, integrity, and a talent for healing. I can make you two promises. I will never have untruth between us, and I will protect you with my life. I have said I will not take what is mine this night. We have time to calm your fears. — Christine Feehan

I've been taught that relationships are supposed to be built from trust, but we're a walking untruth - solely made from love. — Mary Elizabeth

Nothing creates such untruth in you as the wish to please. — Shirley Hazzard

It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth
whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from wha. — Galileo Galilei

What we are probably given is a mixture of truth and untruth. It's anybody's guess as to which part is which and how much there is of each. — Ira Levin

People who tell untruths are easily deceived because they have placed their energy in that negative vibration location and are now a match for that behavior. — Molly Friedenfeld

The main misfortune, the root of all the evil to come, was the loss of confidence in the value of one's own opinion. People imagined that it was out of date to follow their own moral sense, that they must all sing in chorus, and live by other people's notions, notions that were being crammed down everybody's throat. — Boris Pasternak

By oft repeating an untruth, men come to believe it themselves. — Thomas Jefferson

Insistence on truth can come into play when one party practices untruth or injustice. Only then can love be tested. True friendship is put to the test only when one party disregards the obligation of friendship. — Mahatma Gandhi

With the truth on your side, you are powerful even if you are all alone; with the untruth on your side, you are weak even if you are backed by billions! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors. — D.H. Lawrence

What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn't it because you're young, because you haven't had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn't it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me. — Anton Chekhov

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth ... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? — Plato

They [the signers of the Declaration of Independence] did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying that equality, nor yet that they were about to confer it immediately upon them. In fact, they had no power to confer such a boon. They meant simply to declare the right; so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit. — Abraham Lincoln

At each moment, our seemingly objective world emerges from the dancing of consciousness with a single untruth: that there is something out there which is not us. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing. We are simply acting out of deep programming. But once we have seen the true nature of things
once Spirit has opened its eyes within us
we suddenly know what we're doing. There's a much more accurate sense of whether we're moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it's much more painful than we we didn't know our actions were untrue. When we say something to someone that we know is untrue, it causes an inner division that is vastly more painful than when we said the same thing and thought it was true. — Adyashanti

Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. — Mahatma Gandhi

Tak did not expect the stone to have life, but when it did, he smiled upon it, saying "All Things Strive". Time and time again the last testament of Tak has been stolen in a pathetic attempt to kill the nascent future at birth and this is not only an untruth, it is a blasphemy! Tak even finds it in his heart to suffer the Nac Mac Feegles, possibly for their entertainment value, but I wonder if he will continue to tolerate us ... He must look at us now with sorrow, which I hope will not turn into rage. Surely the patience of Tak must find some limitations elsewhere ... — Terry Pratchett

To recognize untruth as a condition of life
that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way; and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

See, far above arrogance and selfishness on the rankings of undesirable Lifestyle traits, topping the lengthy list of carnal sins, occupying its very own stratosphere of unforgivable
reprehensibility, is lying. Without question, fibbing is the fastest way to secure a one-way trip to blackball status in the swing community. So assured is a liar's exile from the Lifestyle that should a perjurer come clean about a material untruth and still secure playtime, that individual will have rewritten the entire swing rulebook. And no matter how enticing it may be to rewrite history, I do not recommend attempting it. Not unless you're lusting after a celibate existence. — Daniel Stern

That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith on injustice, untruth or violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

The whispering of the truth is stronger than the thunderstorm of the untruth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Human nature is rarely so amusing as when trying to get a house off its hands. Women at this task can be untruthful enough, but their untruth lacks the infusion of candor which a skillful male liar can introduce. — E. V. Lucas

As Kierkegaard said, "To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. — Brian Zahnd

You may use a thousand words for a single lie, but the truth has no twin. — Michael Bassey Johnson

Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue, the monograph went on. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact how hard money is to come by, and, there, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. — Kurt Vonnegut

There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple's corridors; she does not know herself. 'I can endure lies,' she cries. 'I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitude — Thornton Wilder