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Material possessions, in themselves, are good. We would not survive for long without money, clothing and shelter. We must eat in order to stay alive. Yet if we are greedy, if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, then we make our possessions into a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death.
Pope Benedict XVITo the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
Nathaniel HawthorneTake off all the masks, manners, fancy clothes, all the devices you use, and be the most honest person you can be with yourself. Then, whatever love you get then is real. All the false approaches, like trying to be a player, only bring false results.
Jacque Fresco[T]aking the Third into account does not bring us into the position of pragmatic consideration, of comparing different Others; the task is rather to learn to distinguish between false conflicts and the true conflict. For example, today's conflict between Western liberalism and religious fundamentalism is a false one, since it is based on the exclusion of the third term which is its truth: the Leftist emancipatory position.
Slavoj ลฝiลพekIn my own version of the idea of 'what art wants,' the end and fulfillment of the history of art is the philosophical understanding of what art is, an understanding that is achieved in the way that understanding in each of our lives is achieved, namely, from the mistakes we make, the false paths we follow, the false images we have come to abandon until we learn wherein our limits consist, and then how to live within those limits.
Arthur DantoA man must first of all understand certain things. He has thousands of false ideas and false conceptions, chiefly about himself, and he must get rid of some of them before beginning to acquire anything new. Otherwise the new will be built on a wrong foundation and the result will be worse than before. To speak the truth is the most difficult thing in the world; one must study a great deal and for a long time in order to speak the truth. The wish alone is not enough. To speak the truth one must know what the truth is and what a lie is, and first of all in oneself. And this nobody wants to know.
G. I. GurdjieffAn argument can be logically valid, but unsound in that it contains a false premise and, therefore, leads to a false conclusion (e.g., Scientists are smart; smart people do not make mistakes; therefore, scientists do not make mistakes).
Sam HarrisMost terrorists are false flag terrorists, or are created by our own security services. In the United States, every single terrorist incident we have had has been a false flag, or has been an informant pushed on by the FBI. In fact, we now have citizens taking out restraining orders against FBI informants that are trying to incite terrorism. We've become a lunatic asylum.
Robert David SteeleI had learnt from experience that many false opinions may be exchanged for true ones, without in the least altering the habits of mind of which false opinions are made.
John Stuart MillAnd our conception that the way we can mitigate the fact that people don't have retirement savings can be more work, or working longer, or just sort of staying in the game for longer is really a false hope. And it's a false promise.
Teresa GhilarducciIn regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.
Aldous Huxley...most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right.
Ralph Waldo EmersonThe false reporting by the media, the false, horrible, fake reporting makes it much harder to make a deal with Russia, and probably [Vladimir] Putin said, he's sitting behind his desk a and he's saying, you know, I see what's going on in the United States, I follow it closely, it's going to be impossible for President [Donald] Trump to ever get along with Russia because of all the pressure he's got with this fake story.
Donald TrumpFalse happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.
Alexander PopeDissections daily convince us of our ignorance of the seats of diseases, and cause us to blush at our prescriptions. How often are we disappointed in our expectation from the most certain and powerful of our remedies, by the negligence or obstinacy of our patients! What mischief have we done under the belief of false facts and false theories! We have assisted in multiplying diseases. We have done more โ we have increased their mortality.
Benjamin RushJesus said that I am the only way. So it is illogical to say all religions are true, but it is not illogical to say all religions are false. All religion could be false but they can't all be true because there are direct logical contradictions.
Josh McDowellEvery journey into the past is complicated by delusions, false memories, false namings of real events.
Adrienne RichBut there are realities governing what they can do. And Ukraine cannot live with the false image that somehow or another the West will come and rescue her. It's not going to happen.
Marvin KalbWe never do evil so effectually as when we are led to do it by a false principle of conscience.
Blaise PascalThe affairs of this world are so shifting and depend on so many accidents, that it is hard to form any judgment concerning the future; nay, we see from experience that the forecasts even of the wise almost always turn out false.
Francesco GuicciardiniBut, indeed, words are very rascals, since bonds [vows] disgraced them." Viola: "Thy reason, man?" Feste: "Troth [Truthfully], sir, I can yield you none without words, and words are grown so false, I am loathe to prove reason with them.
William ShakespeareSay what you want to say about the rest of his presidency, including his tone-deaf response to Katrina and a war waged in Iraq on false pretenses, Bush connected with Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 because he looked as frail and unforgiving as we felt.
Ron FournierI found myself desiring and knowing less and less, until I could say in utter astonishment: "I know nothing, I want nothing." Earlier I was sure of so many things, now I am sure of nothing. But I feel I have lost nothing by not knowing, because all my knowledge was false. My not knowing was in itself knowledge of the fact that all my knowledge is ignorance, that "I do not know" is the only true statement the mind can make....I do not claim to know what you do not. In fact, I know much less than you do.
Sri Nisargadatta MaharajWeโre a different sort of thief here, Lamora. Deception and misdirection are our tools. We donโt believe in hard work when a false face and a good line of bullshit can do so much more.
Scott LynchBy downplaying clear targets and frameworks, ... the Prime Minister is ignoring calls from UK companies who want a clear framework to operate within now. There has been a lot of discussion about the false choice between targets and technologies, but the reality is that without both we cannot achieve either.
Tony JuniperThere are many democracies in our Arab and Islamic countries, but unfortunately, they are all false democracies.
Yusuf al-QaradawiIt's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for the world to see, another in his breast to show to his special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except to himself alone, hidden only God knows where.
James ClavellAll progress in literary style lies in the heroic resolve to cast aside accretions and exuberances, all the conventions of a past age that were once beautiful because alive and are now false because dead.
Havelock EllisThe penal code deals with things like theft, false testimony, adultery, fornication, etc. and then there's the law of the state, the law of the individual and the law of the public.
Anjem ChoudaryIt is an unfortunate fact that every man who seeks to disseminate knowledge must contend not only against ignorance itself, but against false instruction as well. No sooner do we deem ourselves free from a particularly gross superstition, than we are confronted by some enemy to learning who would set aside all the intellectual progress of years, and plunge us back into the darkness of mediaeval disbelief.
H. P. LovecraftIn a state-run society the government promises you security. But it's a false promise predicated on the idea that the opposite of security is risk. Nothing could be further from the truth. The opposite of security is insecurity, and the only way to overcome insecurity is to take risks. The gentle government that promises to hold your hand as you cross the street refuses to let go on the other side.
Theodore J. ForstmannThe criminal misuse of time was pointing out the mistakes. Catching themโnoticing themโthat was essential. If you did not in your own mind distinguish between useful and erroneous information, then you were not learning at all, you were merely replacing ignorance with false belief, which was no improvement. The part of the man's statement that was true, however, was about the uselessness of speaking up. If I know that the teacher is wrong, and say nothing, then I remain the only one who knows, and that gives me an advantage over those who believe the teacher.
Orson Scott CardSometimes I'll have an end in mind, but it's always false, always corny, just a dumb idea anyone could have, sitting on a barstool. An abstract thesis with no real life inside it. And then I start writing and the writing itself confounds me, taking away the comfort of knowing the end in advance. How is that even possible? Doesn't the conclusion come at the end? How can you begin with one - that seems odd, right?
Charles D'AmbrosioI have been trying to point out that in our lives chance may have an astonishing influence and, if I may offer advice to the young laboratory worker, it would be this-never neglect an extraordinary appearance or happening. It may be-usually is, in fact-a false alarm that leads to nothing, but may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.
Alexander FlemingBe very slow to believe that you are wiser than all others; it is a fatal but common error. Where one has been saved by a true estimation of another's weakness, thousands have been destroyed by a false appreciation of their own strength.
Charles Caleb ColtonThe doctrine of the double motion of the earth about its axis and about the sun is false, and entirely contrary to Holy Scripture.
Pope Paul VIt is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest and is its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
Alfred North WhiteheadYou must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHave you ever thought about why, all over the world, in every culture, in every society, there are a few days in the year for celebration? These few days for celebration are just a compensation - because these societies have taken away all celebration in your life, and if nothing is given to you in compensation, your life can become a danger to the culture. Every culture has to give some compensation to you so that you don't feel completely lost in misery, in sadness. But these compensations are false.
RajneeshWe must dress according to the dictates of fashion, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticize anyone who's different, go to a religious service and beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe who worships a false god.
Paulo CoelhoInnocent people can get into terrible jams, too. One false move and you're in over your head.
Ben HechtHe who is false to present duty breaks a thread in the loom, and will find the flaw when he may have forgotten its cause.
Henry Ward BeecherNo character, however upright, is a match for constantly reiterated attacks, however false.
Alexander Hamilton