A Quote by Charley Reese

Reason and truth have rarely prevailed against demagoguery when the audience is too ignorant to tell the difference.

Charley Reese

Quote Topics

Against Audience Demagoguery Difference Ignorant Rarely Reason Tell Too Truth

Quote Author

Charley Reese
American - Writer
Born: January 29, 1937

But there’s a reason we recognize Hamlet as a masterpiece: it’s that Shakespeare told us the truth, and people so rarely tell us the truth in this rise and fall here [indicates blackboard]. The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.

Kurt Vonnegut

I've always been fascinated by the difference between the jokes you can tell your friends but you can't tell to an audience. There's a fine line you have to tread because you don't know who is out there in the auditorium. A lot of people are too easily offended.

Billy Connolly

How forthright does the audience want the broadcasters to be? Because when you tell your truth, there's a lot of anger that comes out. I think it's a good question to ask TV people [executives] too. How much truth do they want to be told? How much truth does the league want told? Because the truth isn't just a positive truth. If you're going to tell the truth, you would be telling a lot of positive and some negative.

Jeff Van Gundy

Too often we tell kids pleasant stories devoid of truth, and stories without truth are not good stories. Our audience deserves more from us.

Mac Barnett

Truth and reason are eternal. They have prevailed. And they will eternally prevail; however, in times and places they may be overborne for a while by violence, military, civil, or ecclesiastical.

Thomas Jefferson

The day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her.

Jacques Maritain

Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.

Mort Sahl

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant-- Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surprise As Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind--

Emily Dickinson

When I became a man, and I started to understand the difference between the truth and what your parents are supposed to tell you, there's a difference, know what I mean?

Nipsey Hussle

I would call the attention of the reader to the difference between "reason" and "reasoning." Reason is a light, reasoning a process. Reason is a faculty, reasoning an exercise of that faculty. Reasoning proceeds from one truth to another by means of argumentation. This generally involves the whole mind in labor and complexity. But reason does not exist merely in order to engage in reasoning. The process is a means to an end. The true fulfillment of reason as a faculty is found when it can embrace the truth simply and without labor in the light of single intuition.

Thomas Merton

It’s not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Robert A. Heinlein

One thing we can probably agree on is that the truth, however we define it, is often hard to tell. It can be hard to tell the facts of the story, and it can be hard to tell its emotional truth too.

Judith Barrington

Now, today is the day we honor, of course, the Presidents, ranging from George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie, to George Bush, who couldn't tell the truth, to Bill Clinton, who couldn't tell the difference.

Jay Leno

Life cannot be against you, for you are Life itself. Life can only seem to go against the ego's projections, which are rarely the truth.

Mooji

Sometimes I don't tell the truth, which is telling the truth about not telling the truth. I think people don't tell the truth when they're afraid that something bad's going to happen if they tell the truth. I say things all the time that I could really get into trouble for, but they kind of blow over.