A Quote by Alexander McCall Smith
There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
Related Quotes
In this play we're dealing with relative truths - who's lying, who's telling the truth. But underneath that, Ed and I have hit this deeper level of intimacy between old friends that comes out in the play.
Novelists lie for a living - what is a novel, after all, but an assembly of fibs paradoxically meant to illustrate something true? - but generally see a distinction between lying on the page and lying off it.
There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.
But I make a distinction between the doctrines of the Church, which matter, and the structure invented by half a dozen Italians who got to be pope and which is of very little use to anybody.
Telling the truth - telling thoughtful truths - should not be a revolutionary act. Speaking truths to power should not be sacrificial, but they are.
There's an ancient connection between movement and music. Most languages don't make a distinction between the words 'music' and 'dance.' And we can see that in the brain. When people are lying perfectly still but listening to music, the neurons in the motor cortex are firing.
Distinction between species and specimen is very much like the distinction between images and actual pictures, or, you know, objects that have a definite material identity. The classifications, the categories, the stereotypes, and the images are on one side, and the material pictures, statues, texts, and so forth are on the other.
Both in verse and in prose [Karl] Shapiro loves, partly out of indignation and partly out of sheer mischievousness, to tell the naked truths or half-truths or quarter-truths that will make anybody's hair stand on end; he is always crying: "But he hasn't any clothes on!" about an emperor who is half the time surprisingly well-dressed.
The distinction between the world of commerce and that of "culture" quickly became the distinction between infrastructure and superstructure, with the former clearly determining the latter.
In my experience with print journalists, the distinction between remarks being uttered on- or off-the-record is held sacrosanct, but the distinction between truth and falsity sometimes isn't.
But perhaps the next step isn't to, once again, expand the otherwise narrow definition of marriage but to altogether abolish the false distinction between married families and other equally valid but unrecognized partnerships.
Once you start thinking about the lies people tell when they don't know they're telling them, the truths people reveal when they think they're lying, then you can start to build a world.
Donald Trump doesn't have significant tells when he's lying because truth and lies to him are kind of homogenized. He's such a pro at it that you don't see a lot of divergence in his body language when he's lying or telling the truth. It's just constant bulls**t. He's probably a very good bluffer.
Outside of mathematics and logic, there are common sense truths, such as that it is snowing that normal observers, in a specified context can agree on, subject to vagueness considerations, and theoretical truths, such as that snow is crystallised water vapour, and maybe in-between truths.
Nothing is drearier than just always telling the truth about yourself. Rousseau, who as far as I can tell was a pathological liar, made this wonderful distinction between lying, which he said there was something wrong with if you were trying to extract an advantage for yourself or evade responsibility for some nasty thing you'd done. But if all you're really trying to do is impress or keep it young or make life more vivid and interesting, go for it! There's no real harm in doing something like that. I think people can be overly saddled to the truth.
It is [a politician's] business to get and hold his job at all costs. If he can hold it by lying, he will hold it by lying; if lying peters out, he will try to hold it by embracing new truths. His ear is ever close to the ground.
Related Authors
Ayn Rand Quotes
Russian
Writer
C. S. Lewis Quotes
British
Writer
Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes
French
Writer
Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes
English
Writer
H. L. Mencken Quotes
American
Writer
Haruki Murakami Quotes
Japanese
Writer
Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
American
Writer
Leo Tolstoy Quotes
Russian
Writer
Mark Twain Quotes
American
Writer
Mason Cooley Quotes
American
Writer
Ray Bradbury Quotes
American
Writer
Samuel Johnson Quotes
English
Writer
Seth Godin Quotes
American
Writer
Sherrilyn Kenyon Quotes
American
Writer
Suzanne Collins Quotes
American
Writer