William F. Buckley [1951]: “The most casual student of history knows that, as a matter of truth, truth does not necessarily vanquish. What is more, truth can never win unless it is promulgated. Truth does not carry within itself an antitoxin to falsehood. The cause of truth must be championed, and it must be championed dynamically.”
Eugene V. Debs [1918]: “The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be ruthlessly suppressed.”
Ralph W. Emerson [1841]: “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society.”
Benjamin Franklin [1758]: “Half the Truth is often a great Lie.”
Henry George [1881]: “He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.”
Elbert Hubbard [19230: “Truth, in its struggles for recognition, passes through four distinct stages. First, we say it is damnable, dangerous, disorderly, and will surely disrupt society. Second, we declare it is heretical, infidelic and contrary to the Bible. Third, we say it is really a matter of no importance either one way or the other. Fourth, we aver that we have always upheld and believed it.”
Thomas Jefferson [1784]: “Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.”
Victor Klemperer, “The Language of The Third Reich,” tells how the Nazis used words as “tiny doses of arsenic” to poison Germany as they weaponized language to subvert truth. He describes “the Nazi cast of mind..the fear of thinking man and;;the hatred of the intellect..” Words, idioms and sentence structures were imposed “in a million repetitions.” And, of course, the euphemisms and code talk: “untermensch,” “racial defilement,” “taken into safe keeping,” “collected,” “final solution.”
Henry W. Longfellow [1868]: “Who dares To say that he alone has found the truth?”
Frank Norris [1903]: “The people have right to the Truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is not right that they be exploited and deceived with false views of life, false characters, false sentiment, false morality, false history, false philosophy, false emotions, false heroism, false notions of self-sacrifice, false views of religion, of duty, of conduct and manners.”
Wendell Phillips [10/4/1859]: “Truth is one forever, absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.”
Thomas B. Reed[1914]: “The truth survives, the untruth perishes. Men have but little capacity for the recognition of truth at first sight, and of a hundred things which seem plausible, it is fortunate if one be true. Hence it is well that all things should be held at arms length and stand the scrutiny of our prejudices and interests, of our religion and our skepticism.”
Adlai Stevenson [ll/9/1952]: “Man may burn his brother at the stake, but he cannot reduce truth to ashes; he may murder his fellow man with a shot in the back, but he does not murder justice; he may slay armies of men, but as it is written, ‘Truth beareth off the victory.”
Henry D. Thoreau [1849]: “It takes two to speak the truth – one to speak, and another to hear.”
Mark Twain [1894]: “One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that the cat has only nine lives.”
[note” credit for the above: The Harper Book of American Quotes]
A dictionary definition of truth: “..actual state of a matter; conformity with fact or reality; a verified or indisputable fact; actuality or actual existence; honesty or integrity”
In these days of “alternative facts,” “fake news,” “hoax,” “enemies of the people,” ‘hating America,” “reform” [ANY change], “religious freedom,” “trickle-down” tax cuts,” “death tax,’ “socialism,” “very fine people on both sides,” “law and order,” etc, etc, etc – a most helpful and necessary book is Michiko Kakutani’s “The Death of Truth” [2018]. Listed below are some of her thoughts.
From Hannah Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction…and the distinction between true and false…no longer exist.”
“The term “TRUTH DECAY” [used by the Rand Corporation to describe the “diminishing role of facts and analysis” in American public life} has joined the post-truth lexicon that includes such now familiar phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts.” And it’s not just fake news either; it’s also fake science [manufactured by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers], fake history [promoted by Holocaust revisionists and white supremacists], fake Americans on Facebook [crated by Russian trolls], and fake followers and “likes” on social media [generated by bots].”
“Pope Francis reminded us, “There is no such thing as harmless disinformation; trusting in falsehood can have dire consequences.””
“..polarization..has been going on since a solar system of right-wing news sites orbiting around Fox News and Breitbart News consolidated its gravitational hold over the Republican base, and it’s been exponentially accelerated by social media, which connects like-minded members and supplies them with customized news feeds that reinforce their preconceptions, allowing them to live in ever narrower, windowless silos.”
‘..former acting attorney general Sally Yates has observed, truth is one of those things that separates us from autocracy…[and if] we look the other way and normalize an indifference to truth.” {we have aided downfall of democracy]
“..in the words of Alexander Hamilton, “of a man unprincipled in private life” and “bold in his temper” one day arising who might “mount the hobby horse of popularity” and “flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day”…”and throw things into confusion that he may ‘ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'”
Page 73 discusses the “both sides” argument – trying “to equate things that cannot be equated.” {This is also used to spread responsibility, as in look at the other side]
“Doubt is our product,” read an infamous memo written by a tobacco industry executive in 1969, “since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the minds of the general public.” {needless to say – this “tobacco strategy” has been used ever since, not only by corporations, but by numerous lying politicians – muddy the waters}
Page lll – discusses how the ending of the “Fairness Doctrine” {in1987 by the Reagan Admin.} has contributed much to the waves of lies and misinformation ever since… and how “..the right-wing media has grown into a sprawling, solipsistic network that endlessly repeats its own tropes..” She lists some of the components of the empire, and “In an Orwellian move, Sinclair has even forced local news anchors to read a scripted message about “false news” that echoes President Trump’s own rhetoric undermining real reporting.”
Page 138, an interesting note: “Steve Bannon..once described himself to a journalist as “a Lenninist..Lennon wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal, too.”
“A Rand Corporation report called this the Putin method of propaganda “the firehose of falsehood” – an unremitting, high intensity stream of lies, partial truths, and complete fictions spewed forth with tireless aggression to obfuscate the truth and overwhelm and confuse anyone trying to pay attention.”
“Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.”
“Jefferson wrote that because the young republic was predicated on the proposition “that man may be governed by reason and truth,” our “first object should be, to leave open to him all the avenues of the truth.”
With Justice For All 