#lies

Because instant and credible information has to be given, it becomes necessary to resort to guesswork, rumors and suppositions to fill in the voids, and none of them will ever be rectified, they will stay on in the readers' memory. How many hasty, immature, superficial and misleading judgments are expressed every day, confusing readers, without any verification. The press can both simulate public opinion and miseducate it. Thus we may see terrorists heroized, or secret matters, pertaining to one's nation's defense, publicly revealed, or we may witness shameless intrusion on the privacy of well-known people under the slogan: "everyone is entitled to know everything." But this is a false slogan, characteristic of a false era: people also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk. A person who works and leads a meaningful life does not need this excessive burdening flow of information. ↗

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

#lies #the-media #the-press #life

Of all the bright cruel lies they tell you, the cruelest is the one called love. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#love #love

It's time to make love, douse the glim; The fireflies twinkle and dim; The stars lean together Like birds of a feather, And the loin lies down with the limb. ↗

— Conrad Aiken

#coitus #fireflies #intercourse #lamb #limb

So the major obstacle to the development of new supplies is not geology but what happens above ground: international affairs, politics, investment and technology. ↗

— Daniel Yergin

#affairs #development #geology #ground #happens

I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happned because I don't like it when she keeps something from me. She's not allowed. Because when she lies, someting inside me changes, and it's like the WHOLE WORLD is one way and I'm the other. Like I can't trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don't and I'm running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won't and the more I don't know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone. ↗

— Jack Gantos

#change

Despite the variety and the differences, and however much we proclaim the contrary, what the media produce is neither spontaneous nor completely “free:” “news” does not just happen, pictures and ideas do not merely spring from reality into our eyes and minds, truth is not directly available, we do not have unrestrained variety at our disposal. For like all modes of communication, television, radio, and newspapers observe certain rules and conventions to get things across intelligibly, and it is these, often more than the reality being conveyed, that shape the material delivered by the media. ↗

— Edward W. Said

#lies #media #news #reality #communication

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. ↗

— George R.R. Martin

#lies #life #truth #death

But it also had many large posters with messages of a more peaceful nature. These extolled the country’s economic achievement since the Cultural Revolution, which was supposed to have liberated the forces of production and increased productivity. Of course, the Cultural Revolution had done just the opposite. Official lies like this, habitually indulged in and frequently displayed by the authorities, served no purpose except to create the impression that truth was unimportant. Pg. 400 ↗

— Nien Cheng

#communism #lies #mao #death

[As a very young man, I thought] of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen. ↗

— Roman Payne

#dreams #europe #lies #movies #roman-payne

Politics bores you?" Bronsen said. Julien smiled. "It does. Apologies, sir, and it is not that I haven't tried to be fascinated. But careful and meticulous research has suggested the hypothesis that all politicians are liars, fools, and tricksters, and I have as yet come across no evidence to the contrary. They can do great damage, and rarely any good. It is the job of the sensible man to try and protect civilization from their depradations. ↗

— Iain Pears

#damage #deceit #depradation #lies #politicians