This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Falsehood is never so successful as when she baits her hook with truth, and no opinions so fatally mislead us, as those that are not wholly wrong; as no watches so effectually deceive the wearer as those that are sometimes right." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Truth is established by investigation and delay; falsehood prospers by precipitancy." - Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
"Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer." - Edmund Burke
"Dogmas are at their best when nobody denies them, for then their falsehood sleeps, like that of an unconscious metaphor, and their moral function is discharged instinctively." - George Santayana
"Falsehood is cowardice." - Hosea Ballou
"Truth is like the stars; it does not appear except from behind obscurity of the night. Truth is like all beautiful things in the world; it does not disclose its desirability except to those who first feel the influence of falsehood. Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness." - Kahlil Gibran
"Man can certainly keep on lying (and does so), but he cannot make truth falsehood." - Karl Barth
"No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"Let the truth and right by which you are apparently the loser be preferable to you to the falsehood and wrong by which you are apparently the gainer." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"Prosperity, obtained through truth and righteousness, is built on a sure rock. Happiness derived from falsehood, injustice and lust, is built on sand." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"Truth is the beginning of every good thing, both in heaven and on earth; and he who would be blessed and happy should be fro the first a partaker of the truth, that he may live a true man as long as possible, for then he an be trusted; but he is not to be trusted who loves voluntary falsehood and he who loves involuntary falsehood is a fool." - Plato NULL
"How can I adequately express my contempt for the assertion that all things occur for the best, for a wise and beneficent end, and are ordered by a human intelligence! It is the most utter falsehood and a crime against the human race." - Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies
"A willful falsehood told is a cripple, not able to stand by itself without another to support it. It is easy to tell a lie, but hard to tell only one lie." - Thomas Fuller
"Our opinions are not our own, but in the power of sympathy. If a person tells us a palpable falsehood, we not only dare not to contradict him, but we dare hardly to disbelieve him to his face. a lie boldly uttered has the effect of truth for the instant." - William Hazlitt
"Conversation should be pleasant without scurrility, witty without affectation, free without indecency, learned without conceitedness, novel without falsehood." - William Shakespeare
"The word reason itself is far from being precise in its meaning. In common and popular discourse it denotes the power by which we distinguish truth from falsehood, and right from wrong, and by which we are enabled to combine means for the attainment of particular ends…. Reason is sometimes used to express the whole of those powers which elevate man above the brutes, and constitute his rational nature, more especially, perhaps, his intellectual powers; sometimes to express the power of deduction or argumentation." - Dugald Stewart
"We must fight their falsehood with our truth, but we must also fight the falsehood in our truth" - Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
"The law does not fawn on the noble; the string does not yield to the crooked. Whatever the law applies to, the wise cannot reject nor can the brave defy. Punishment for fault never skips ministers, reward for good never misses commoners. Therefore, to correct the faults of the high, to rebuke the vices of the low, to suppress disorders, to decide against mistakes, to subdue the arrogant, to straighten the crooked, and to unify the folkways of the masses, nothing could match the law. To warn the officials and overawe the people, to rebuke obscenity and danger, and to forbid falsehood and deceit, nothing could match penalty. If penalty is severe, the noble cannot discriminate against the humble. If law is definite, the superiors are esteemed and not violated. If the superiors are not violated, the sovereign will become strong and able to maintain the proper course of government. Such was the reason why the early kings esteemed legalism and handed it down to posterity. Should the lord of men discard law and practice selfishness, high and low would have no distinction. Hence to govern the state by law is to praise the right and blame the wrong." - Han Fei, also Han Fei Zi, Han Feitzu and Han Fei Tzu
"For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others" - John Locke
"For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others. " - John Locke
"A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. " - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"Education is not just learning to read but learning what to think about what you read and how to choose worthwhile reading material. It's about learning to discern truth and falsehood in what you read." - John Taylor Gatto
"No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness?" - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"The Art of Peace is not easy. It is a fight to the finish, the slaying of evil desires and all falsehood within. on occasion the Voice of Peace resounds like thunder, jolting human beings out of their stupor." - Morihei Ueshiba
"If the seal of time were to be the signet of truth, there is no absurdity, oppression, or falsehood that might not be revived as gospel; while the gospel itself would want the more ancient warrant of paganism." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
"Unfortunately, where there is no experiment of exact science to settle the matter, it takes as much time and trouble to pull down a falsehood as to build up a truth. " - Peter Mere Latham
"This perpetual industry amid external pursuits, also diverts the mind from the study of mysteries, to the acceptance and en joyment of facts, and hence the public mind turns away from predestination and reprobation and absolutism, not simply be cause it has developed a consciousness of freedom, but also because in the long association with facts, it has lost love for the study of the incomprehensible, in both religion and philosophy. In this casting off of old garments, it no more cheerfully throws away the inconceivable of Christianity, than tne incon ceivable of Kant and Spinoza. In thisabandonment,there is no charge of falsehood cast upon the old mysteries ; they may or may not be true ; there is only a passing them by as not being in the line of the current wish or taste, raiment for a past age, perhaps for a future, but not acceptable in the present. " - David Swing, aka Professor Swing
"If you believe in everything, some of your beliefs may be foolish but you will also believe in the truth. However, when a person is too clever and does not want to believe in anything, he may begin by ridiculing falsehood and folly but can easily end up so skeptical of everything that he even denies the truth." - Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
"A falsehood in which some truth is not stated at the beginning, cannot be maintained in the end." - Rashi, born Shlomo ben Yitzchok, aka Salomon Isaacides, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki NULL
"Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise." - Robertson Davies
"Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it." - Robertson Davies
"Books (says Bacon) can never teach the use of books; the student must learn by commerce with mankind to reduce his speculations to practice. No man should think so highly of himself as to suppose he can receive but little light from books, nor so meanly as to believe he can discover nothing but what is to be learned from them." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Friends are often chosen for similitude of manners, and therefore each palliates the other’s failings because they are his own." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"It is much easier to design than to perform. A man proposes his schemes of life in a state of abstraction and disengagement, exempt from the enticements of hope, the solicitations of affection, the importunities of appetite, or the depressions of fear, and is in the same state with him that teaches upon land the art of navigation, to whom the sea is always smooth, and the wind always prosperous." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"I love the crazy dreams that tames cruelty." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
"Music is well said to be the speech of angels. In fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine. It brings us near to the infinite." - Thomas Carlyle
"The eternal stars shine out as soon as it is dark enough." - Thomas Carlyle
"With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering." - Thomas Carlyle
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper [(candle)] at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is a happy circumstance in human affairs that evils which are not cured in one way will cure themselves in some other." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is a principle that the right to a thing gives a right to the means without which it could not be used, that is to say that the means follow their end." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is rare that the public sentiment decides immorally or unwisely, and the individual who differs from it ought to distrust and examine well his own opinion." - Thomas Jefferson
"Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson
"It is far better that we admitted a thousand devils to roam at large than that we permitted one such imposter and monster as Moses, Joshua, Samuel, and the Bible prophets, to come with the pretended word of God and have credit among us." - Thomas Paine
"No nation ought to be without a debt. A national debt is a national bond; and when it bears no interest, is in no case a grievance." - Thomas Paine
"A pretence of Art to destroy Art; a pretence of Liberty To destroy Liberty; a pretence of Religion to destroy Religion. " - William Blake
"An indirect quotation we can usually expect to rate only as better or worse, more or less faithful, and we cannot even hope for a strict standard of more and less; what is involved is evaluation, relative to special purposes, of an essentially dramatic act." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine