#truth

I like you," he said. He made it sound as if she was bound to disagree with him. She nodded. His face said he was telling her something very important. He said, "I mean it. Whatever happens, you have to believe that. ↗

— Jenny Downham

#mikey #truth #love

It takes a fearless, unflinching love and deep humility to accept the universe as it is. The most effective way he knew to accomplish that, the most powerful tool at his disposal, was the scientific method, which over time winnows out deception. It can't give you absolute truth because science is a permanent revolution, always subject to revision, but it can give you successive approximations of reality. ↗

— Ann Druyan

#carl-sagan #cosmos #fearless #humanity #humility

The artist is a collector. Not a hoarder, mind you, there's a difference: Hoarders collect indiscriminately, artists collect selectively. They only collect things that they really love. ↗

— Austin Kleon

#love

You just sit there and tolerate it, the same way everything in this country is tolerated. Every deception, every lie, every bullet in the brains. Just as you are already tolerating bullets in the brains that will be implemented only after the bullet is put in your brains. ↗

— Imre Kertész

#deception #government #radicalism #tolerance #truth

I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you going to say to his face what you think? Well, tell me!' His brother was silent and Edward went on: 'If you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth, only what you really thought, you would enter into a serious conversation with a madman and you yourself would become mad. And it is the same way with the world that surrounds us. If I obstinately told a man the truth to his face, it would mean I was taking him seriously. And to take something so unimportant seriously means to become less than serious oneself. I, you see, must lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become one of them myself. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#lies #lying #truth #virtue #imagination

Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him ... These things I know, Ubertino; I also have belonged to those groups of men who believe they can produce the truth with white-hot iron. Well, let me tell you, the white heat of truth comes from another flame. ↗

— Umberto Eco

#torture #truth #imagination

Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous. ↗

— Frank Herbert

#kindlehighlight #knowledge #manipulation #propoganda #truth

Wedded she some years, and to a man Of fifty, and such husbands are in plenty; And yet, I think, instead of such a ONE 'Twere better to have TWO of five and twenty... ↗

— George Gordon Byron

#truth #funny

Funny how people don't really see each other. Men and women. They invent each other in their minds and then they see what they invent.They don't really see each other. Now she was in love with him and she didn't even know his real name, didn't know anything real about him. ↗

— Andrew Klavan

#love #truthful-in-every-way #funny

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices. ↗

— Frederick The Great

#prejudices #truths #men