Quotes About Authenticity

I find that most people worth knowing are fucked up in some way or another.

Art forgery also provokes anxiety. Because art is a rare refuge from the mass-produced inauthenticity of the industrialized world, we are hypersensitive to any threat to the authenticity of art.

art forgeries achieve what legitimate art accomplishes when legitimate art is most effective, provoking us to ask agitating questions about ourselves and our world.

I hate show business.

Art is short for artificial…so the art of art is to be as real as you can within this artificial situation… In a way it's a lie to get you to see the truth.

Real cardamom is expensive, second only to saffron in price, and there are lots of inferior substitutes from cardamom-related plants masquerading as the real thing. Only Elettaria cardamomum—its botanical name—is

You cannot maintain trust in yourself if you lie. You cannot maintain trust in yourself, likewise, if you act in a manner that would require a lie if it was discovered.

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act. You simply don't know what you believe, before that. You are too complex to understand yourself.

If you don't say what you think then you kill your unborn self.

If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don't lie.

If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.

Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn." That is the voice of authenticity. "Did what I want happen? No. Then the world is unfair. People are jealous, and too stupid to understand. It is the fault of something or someone else." That is the voice of inauthenticity.

Don't use language instrumentally

If you will not reveal yourself to others, you cannot reveal yourself to yourself. That does not only mean that you suppress who you are, although it also means that. It means that so much of what you could be will never be forced by necessity to come forward.

In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise. Tell the truth. Or, at least, don't lie.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie—and tyranny feeds on lies.

True thinking is rare—just like true listening.

Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word,

Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing.

The prideful, rational mind, comfortable with its certainty, enamoured of its own brilliance, is easily tempted to ignore error, and to sweep dirt under the rug. Literary, existential philosophers, beginning with Søren Kierkegaard, conceived of this mode of Being as "inauthentic." An inauthentic person continues to perceive and act in ways his own experience has demonstrated false. He does not speak with his own voice.

What is the moral of the story? Make yourself colorful, stand out, and the lions will take you down. And the lions are always there.

telling people you're virtuous isn't a virtue, it's self-promotion. Virtue signalling is not virtue. Virtue signalling is, quite possibly, our commonest vice.)

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act.

deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism.