Truth

"The foulest damage to our political life comes not from the 'secrets' which they hide from us, but from the little bits of half-truth and disinformation which they do tell us. These are already pre-digested, and then are sicked up as little gobbits of authorised spew. The columns of defence correspondents in the establishment sheets serve as the spittoons" E. P. Thompson

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. ... Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness." Hannah Arendt

"What if your eyes and your ability to think critically and independently tell you that all information from the institutions of the state is a lie? What do you do then? Do you trust your own cognitive abilities or blindly follow authority pretending everything can be somehow explained? If your worldview cannot explain what you see with your own eyes, then the problem is probably with your worldview. So, do you change this view or deny it?" David McGowan

"One man who stopped lying could bring down a tyranny." Alexander Solschenizyn

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth." Vladimir Lenin

"There is nothing worse than words of kindness that lie." Juvenal

"There is a tendency not to tell people the plain truth anymore because of fear of their reaction." Michael Kretschmer

"The truths that seem most truthful, if you look at them from all sides, if you look at them close up, turn out to be either half truths or lies." Mario Vargas Llosa

"This is going to be an unpopular truth, especially in the extremely delusional and deceived world we now live in. But the reality is this: none of what is going on outside is getting better. Nothing improves. Everything in our world feels fake. Our food is fake. Our news is fake. Our politicians are fake. Our history is fake. Even our financial system feels fake. And the people on our TV screens, on our phone screens — they’re lying to us, because everything is like a scripted movie. If you want to believe the absolute garbage that is being spoon-fed to us, then that is your prerogative. But I would hope that by now — five years into this very odd new world, this strange reality we’re living in — most of us have started to recognize that something deeper is going on. Something more sinister. Something more… spiritual, even, behind the scenes. I’ve reached a point where I literally don’t believe anything I see anymore. Nothing. Because after the last five years — maybe a bit more — it’s become clear to me that narratives are being pushed. Distractions are being manufactured. And in the end… we are watching a movie." ashleyhays2.0

"A truth can only take effect when the recipient is ready for it. Therefore, it is not the fault of the truth that people are still so full of folly." Christian Morgenstern

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." Henry Louis Mencken

"The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are." Harry Gordon Frankfurt

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

"The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose." Harry Gordon Frankfurt