It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

It is only because a person has volitions of the second order that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking freedom of the will.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.

Bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstance require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.