Compiled by Barbara Hartwell, 2002
A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly.
But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of govt. itself. For the traitor appears not traitor: He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation. He works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.
--Marcus Tullius, Cicero 42 BC
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar. --Julius Caesar
Remember, I have the right to do anything to anybody.
--Caligula
I think the true test of a genius is the ability to see the follies of one's own times. The ability to change one's own times is the true test of a leader. And the ability to do both is the true test of a visionary, who will never be elected. --Marilyn vos Savant
A genius is precisely a man who defies all schools and rules, who deviates from the traditional roads of routine and opens up new paths through land inaccessible before. A genius is always a teacher, never a pupil; he is always self-made.
--Unknown
Ridicule is the tribute that mediocrity pays to genius.
--Unknown
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth...for my part, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst; and to provide for it.
--Patrick Henry
A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and the financial influences, which are at its disposal. This unnatural way of spreading idea must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer's receptiveness for the truth. For those who sincerely seek the truth should not fear the outcome.
--Albert Schweitzer
There is no such thing to this date of the worlds' history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know before hand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in 1 issue of my paper, before 24 hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of journalist is to destroy truth; to lie outright; to pervert; to vilify; to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are the tools and vassals for rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings, and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities, and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes. --John Swinton, former Chief of Staff of the NY Times
It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear. Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
--Henry David Thoreau
The 'truth' is more important than the facts.
--Frank Lloyd Wright
All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self evident.
--Schoepenhauer
If you are made aware of a lie and you do nothing to expose the lie, then you become part of the lie. There can be a million lies, but there is only one truth.
--Unknown
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS.
--Mahatma Gandhi
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and it's speaker a raving lunatic.
--Unknown
Fear may be the greatest weapon, but the truth is the greatest defense!
--Unknown
The object of the superior man is truth.
--Confucius
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell
The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy of the State.
--Joseph M. Goebbels
The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.
--Adolph Hitler
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.
--Jesus Christ