Quotes about Falsehood

"Rebbe," a woman asked during an ecumenical panel discussion, "Aren't all religions equally true?" "No," said Reb Yerachmiel, "all religions are equally false."

The relationship of religion to Truth is like that of a menu to a meal. The menu describes the meal as best it can. It points to something beyond itself. As long we use the menu as a guide we do it honor. When we mistake the menu for the meal, we do it and ourselves a grave injustice.

To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.

As regards truth and falsehood, it isn`t truth that has to be invented. > Let`s argue about something intellectual.

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind.  He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.

There is nothing so absurd that it cannot be believed as truth if repeated often enough.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.

To lapse in fulness Is sorer than to lie for need, and falsehood Is worse in kings than beggars.

If you pick a truth and follow it blindly. It becomes a falsehood, and you a fanatic.

Always remember, no one can debase you but yourself. Slander, satire, falsehood, injustice-these can never rob you of your manhood. Men may lie about you, they may denounce you, they may cherish suspicions manifold, they may make your failings the target of their wit or cruelty. Never be alarmed; never swerve an inch from the line your judgment and conscience have marked out for you. They cannot, by all their efforts, take away your knowledge of yourself, the purity of your character, and the generosity of your nature. While these are left, you are unharmed.

Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.

To tell a falsehood is like the cut of a saber; for though the wound may heal, the scar of it will remain.

Had I a heart for falsehood framed, I ne'er could injure you.

There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposite is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth.

Adhere to truth, for truth leads to good deeds and good deeds leads him who does them to paradise. Falsehood is wickedness and wickedness leads to hell.

Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.

{There are two paths leading to oneness with the Tao.} The first in the path of acceptance. Affirm everyone and everything. Freely extend you goodwill and virtue in every direction, regardless of circumstances. Embrace all things as part of the Harmonious Oneness, and then you will begin to perceive it. The second path is that of denial. Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth. Peel all the veils away, and you will arrive at the Oneness. Though these paths are entirely different, they will deliver you to the same place: spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness.

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.

Oh Jesus, they have built these churches for the sake of their own glory, and embellished them with silk and melted gold. . . . They left the bodies of Thy chosen poor wrapped in tattered raiment in the cold night. . . . They filled the sky with the smoke of burning candles and incense and left the bodies of Thy faithful worshipers empty of bread. . . . They raised their voices with hymns of praise, but deafened themselves to the cry and moan of the widows and orphans. Come again, Oh Living Jesus, and drive the vendors of Thy faith from Thy sacred temple, for they have turned it into a dark cave where vipers of hypocrisy and falsehood crawl and abound.

Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do ingloriously, by licensing and prohibiting, to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple: who ever knew Truth put to the worse in a free and open encounter?

That practis'd falsehood under saintly shew, Deep malice to conceal, couch'd with revenge.

Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear Touch'd lightly; for no falsehood can endure Touch of celestial temper.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For 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.

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or evil side; Some great cause, God's new Messiah offering each the bloom or blight, Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep upon the right; And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness and that light.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

No way of thinking or doing, however ancient, can be trusted without proof. What everybody echoes or in silence passes by as true to-day may turn out to be falsehood to-morrow.

Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be outraged by silence.