MADRIGAL: One can lie. … But truth is more interesting!
Enid Bagnold (1889-1981) English writer
The Chalk Garden, Act 3 (1955)
Ellipses in original.
Quotations about:
truth-telling
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
The plaque at the front of the courtroom, high on the wall, was permanent and yet its words were new each time Jack read them, read them half against his will, his eyes moving restlessly forward and up to them while testimony droned on: Conscience Speaks the Truth.
Yes, it is always the best policy to speak the truth — unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) English writer, humorist [Jerome Klapka Jerome]
Idler Magazine, “The Idler’s Club” column (1892-02)
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My daddy always told me to just do the best you knew how and tell the truth. He said there was nothin to set a man’s mind at ease like wakin up in the morning and not havin to decide who you were.
Cormac McCarthy (1933-2023) American novelist, playwright, screenwriter
No Country for Old Men (2007)
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The whole truth would be an infinite concatenation of mostly irrelevant facts, with an occasional dose of, in textspeak, “TMI,” too much information — when, for example, you ruin the case you were making against factory farming by going into such detail about how painful de-beaking is for chickens that your listener shuts you out and struggles to think about something else. So we do not tell the whole truth; we tell carefully crafted stories, and we do this even when our moral purpose is to tell the truth.
Justin E. H. Smith (b. 1972) American-Canadian professor of history and philosophy of science
Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, ch. 8 (2019)
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