Quotes About Truth

The ritual denunciation of the so-called 'socialist' states is replete with distortions and often outright lies.

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I'm sure you believe everything you're saying. But what I'm saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.

all sorts of considerations determine the truth conditions of a statement, and these go well beyond the scope of grammar.

media are independent and committed to discovering and reporting the truth, and that they do not merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived.

Los maestros tienen la obligación de investigar y difundir la verdad sobre los temas más significativos, sobre los temas que importan.

La escuela impide la difusión de verdades esencial.

La obligación de cualquier maestro es ayudar a sus estudiantes a descubrir la verdad por sí mismos.

La realtà è diversa, ma sgradita, e dunque poco raccontata.

La escuela impide la difusión de verdades esenciales.

Il continuo bombardamento di materiale selezionato ad hoc, praticamente privo di voci critiche o di passaggi analitici, instilla solidamente nei lettori i presupposti che ne stanno alla base, allineando la percezione del pubblico alla giusta dottrina più efficacemente di quanto potrebbe fare un ministero della Verità. Nel frattempo i media possono sostenere che stanno solo facendo il loro mestiere onestamente: il che è vero, anche se non proprio nel senso che intendono loro.

The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of 'Fuck You', so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level.

truisms at least have the merit of being true, which distinguishes them from a good deal of political discourse. And

lo que debemos hacer es tratar de entender la verdad acerca del mundo. Y la verdad acerca del mundo es generalmente bastante fea.

It takes a phrase to produce a lie and ten minutes to decode it.

Then he quotes Hannah Arendt from her book The Origins of Totalitarianism: "The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies with factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world—and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end—is being destroyed" (quoted in Hedges 2017).

I don't say you're self-censoring - I'm sure you believe everything you're saying; but what I'm saying is, if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting.

it's always useful to look at the establishment Left, marking the limits of what it is OK to say. Lewis wrote in New York Times (May 1, 1975) that the war began with "blundering efforts to do good." How do we know that? Because it's an axiom, a necessary truth. If the United States did it, it was an effort to do good. You don't need any evidence for that. That's hegemonic common sense. Why "blundering efforts"? Because it didn't work.

They all know exactly what they're doing, not just the reporters and the editors of the major press, but also the CEOs of the energy and financial corporations. And, of course, also the political leaders. They're not illiterate.

The new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. This is not pointed at anyone. —Max Planck

For a privileged minority, Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology, and class interest through which the events of current history are presented to us. The responsibilities of intellectuals, then, are much deeper than what Macdonald calls the "responsibility of peoples," given the unique privileges that intellectuals enjoy.

It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies. This, at least, may seem enough of a truism to pass without comment. Not so, however. For the modern intellectual, it is not at all obvious.

Most people are not liars. They can't tolerate too much cognitive dissonance. I don't want to deny that there are outright liars, just brazen propagandists. You can find them in journalism and in the academic professions as well. But I don't think that's the norm. The norm is obedience, adoption of uncritical attitudes, taking the easy path of self-deception.

It is of no particular interest that one man is quite happy to lie in behalf of a cause which he knows to be unjust; but it is significant that such events provoke so little response in the intellectual community—no feeling, for example, that there is something strange in the offer of a major chair in humanities to a historian who feels it to be his duty to persuade the world that an American-sponsored invasion of a nearby country is nothing of the sort.