"It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it." A. A. Hodge
"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time." Abraham Lincoln
"The chief enemies of republican freedom are mental sloth, conformity, bigotry, superstition, credulity, monopoly in the market of ideas, and utter, benighted ignorance." - Adele v. State of Florida, 385 U.S 39, 49 (1967)
"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one." Adolf Hitler
"[I]n the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. " Adolf Hitler
"The size of the lie is a definite factor in causing it to be believed, for the vast masses of a nation are in the depths of their hearts more easily deceived than they are consciously and intentionally bad. The primitive simplicity of their minds renders them a more easy prey to a big lie than a small one, for they themselves often tell little lies, but would be ashamed to tell big lies." Adolf Hitler
"In war, truth is the first casualty." Aeschylus
"The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding." Albert Camus
"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true." Albert Einstein
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." Albert Einstein
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Albert Einstein
"The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge." Albert Einstein
"The restriction of knowledge to an elite group destroys the spirit of the society and leads to its intellectual impoverishment." Albert Einstein
"Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth." Albert Einstein
"For those who sincerely seek the truth should not fear the outcome." Albert Schweitzer
"A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers…The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth." Aldous Huxley
"In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State." Alexander Solzhenitsyn
"A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous." Alfred Adler
"It takes a very long time to learn that a courtroom is the last place in the world for learning the truth." Alice Koller
"Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty." Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
"Truth is hate to those who hate the truth. And that is the truth." Anonymous
"Educated men are as much superior to uneducated men as the living are to the dead" Aristotle, 384-322 B.C
"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think." Aristotle
"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold." Aristotle
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
"Parent choice'' proceeds from the belief that the purpose of education is to provide individual students with an education. In fact, educating the individual is but a means to the true end of education, which is to create a viable social order to which individuals contribute and by which they are sustained. "Family choice'' is, therefore, basically selfish and anti-social in that it focuses on the "wants'' of a single family rather than the "needs'' of society." Association of California School Administrators
"It is not laissez-faire that has failed. That would be an ill day for men. What has failed is the courage to see what is true and speak it to the people, to point to the true remedies." Auberon Herbert
"Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the refusal to see,...the refusal to know." Ayn Rand
"How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct." Benjamin Disraeli
"There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." Benjamin Disraeli
"Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time." Benjamin Disraeli
"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know & prize the rights which G-d has given them, cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance, that tyranny begins." Benjamin Franklin
"Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of the soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it." Benjamin Franklin
"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." Benjamin Franklin
"The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts." Bergan Evans
"The biggest cause of trouble in the world today is: the stupid people are so sure about things, and the intelligent folks are so full of doubts" Bertrand Russell
"Every time Bush talks about trust it makes chills run up and down my spine. The way he has trampled on the truth is a travesty of the American political system." Bill Clinton
"The road to tyranny, we must never forget, begins with the destruction of the truth." Bill Clinton
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." Buddha
"Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us -- and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along." Carl Sagan
"History is full of people who out of fear, or ignorance, or lust for power has destroyed knowledge of immeasurable value which truly belongs to us all. We must not let it happen again." Carl Sagan
"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We're no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It is simply too painful to acknowledge -- even to ourselves -- that we've been so credulous. (So the old bamboozles tend to persist as the new bamboozles rise.)" Carl Sagan
"A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however, socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends." Caryl Parker Haskins
"False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for everyone takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness; and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened." Charles Darwin
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." Charles Darwin, 1871
"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don´t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if anything is to be got by it." Charles Dickens
"Never argue with an idiot; they'll drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." Charlie Ritchie of the BACKWOODSMAN Magazine
"It does not require many words to speak the truth." Chief Joseph
"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion." Chinese Proverb
"Many national myths, at their core, are racist. They are fed by ignorance. Those individuals who understand other cultures, speak other languages, and find richness in diversity are shunted aside. Science, history, and psychology are often twisted to serve myth. And many intellectuals are willing to champion and defend absurd theories for nationalist ends." Christopher Hedges
"Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails." Clarence S. Darrow
"The single most exciting thing you encounter in government is competence, because it's so rare." Daniel Patrick Moynihan
"There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange." Daniel Webster
"He who is afraid of asking is ashamed of learning." Danish Proverb
"The modern susceptibility to conformity and obedience to authority indicates that the truth endorsed by authority is likely to be accepted as such by a majority of the people." David Edwards
"In order to get the truth, conflicting arguments and expression must be allowed. There can be no freedom without choice, no sound choice without knowledge." David K. Berninghausen
"The more you know, the more your realize how much you don't know -- the less you know, the more you think you know." David T. Freeman
"There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches, and the like... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm." Demosthenes
"It’s a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn’t want to hear." Dick Cavett
"A truth's initial commotion is directly proportional to how deeply the lie was believed. It wasn't the world being round that agitated people, but that the world wasn't flat. When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic." Dresden James.
"Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it." Emily Dickinson
"To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats -- we know it not." Eric Hoffer
"The truth doesn't sell. It is high in supply, but low in demand." Eric Schaub
"The truth has always been dangerous to the rule of the rogue, the exploiter, the robber. So the truth must be suppressed." Eugene v. Debs, 1918
"To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish." Euripides
"Freedom of expression is the well-spring of our civilization... The history of civilization is in considerable measure the displacement of error which once held sway as official truth by beliefs which in turn have yielded to other truths. Therefore the liberty of man to search for truth ought not to be fettered, no matter what orthodoxies he may challenge." Felix Frankfurter
"Liberty of thought soon shrivels without freedom of expression. Nor can truth be pursued in an atmosphere hostile to the endeavor or under dangers which are hazarded only by heroes." Felix Frankfurter
"For whatever deserves to exist deserves also to be known, for knowledge is the image of existence, and things mean and splendid exist alike." Sir Francis Bacon
"No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth." Francis Bacon, 1623
"Law resides within darkness and pure fiction. It cannot sustain the scrutiny of truth when light is shone upon it. Law only exists because we have been lied too about who we are and the nature of the reality in which we live. The entire house of cards relies upon the belief that someone external to you has power over you, when in fact by careful and simple observations, you find that they don't. Money, the other partner in this mass fraud, is created out of thin air by the banks and people who wish undermine the natural creative growth of our world and implement destructive policies that induce fear and various levels of war. You are enslaved because you have accepted fiction has being truth. Whenever you see people protecting something from scrutiny ask yourself why? Truth requires no laws to protect it." Francis Robert Thomas Hay 'The Extortion System of the Ruling Elite'
"A sure sign of a genius is that all of the dunces are in a confederacy against him.” Frank Lloyd Wright
"There is nothing that can help you understand your beliefs more than trying to explain them to an inquisitor." Frank Clark
"The truth is always the strongest argument." Frederick The Great
"The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices." Frederick the Great
"It is largely because civilization enables us constantly to profit from knowledge which we individually do not possess and because each individual's use of his particular knowledge may serve to assist others unknown to him in achieving their ends that men as members of civilized society can pursue their individual ends so much more successfully than they could alone." Friedrich August von Hayek
"Truth does not always seem truthful." French proverb
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies." Friedrich Nietzsche
"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying to others and to yourself." Fyodor Dostoyevsky
"The spirit of inquiry, The search for greater truth beyond religion, science, the profound seriousness of doing real thinking, philosophy and ontology - These are almost totally lacking in humanity. Humanity is therefore, subhuman from lack of genuine intelligence.. They automatically reject, any emergent facts or realities that do that fit their brain-dead cognitive pattern of belief and disbelief." Gabriel Chiron, 'Truth is Greater Than Man"
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo Galilei (1564 - 1642)
"The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses." Galileo
"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." Gandhi
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." Gandhi
"Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you're right and you know it, speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth." Gandhi
"Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear." Gandi
"Truth never damages a cause that is just." Gandhi
"Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth." Gandhi
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall." Gandhi
"A false conclusion once arrived at and widely accepted is not easily dislodged and the less it is understood the more tenaciously it is held." Georg Cantor
"With most people unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another." Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"All great truths begin as blasphemies." George Bernard Shaw
"Two percent of the people think, three percent of the people Think they think, and ninety-five percent of the people would rather die than think." George Bernard Shaw
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." George Carlin
"Dare to be true. Nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby." George Herbert
"Doubt is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom." George Iles
"In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1984
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there be pains taken to bring it to light." George Washington
"They must find it difficult, those who have taken authority as the truth, rather than truth as the authority." Gerald Massey
"It takes a great many shovelfuls to bury the truth." German proverb
"Truth is an orphan." German proverb
"You cannot become a truly effective advocate unless you know all sides of your subject thoroughly, opposing arguments as well as your own." G. R. Capp
"Ah yes, truth. Funny how everyone is always asking for it, but when they get it they don't want to believe it because it's not the truth they want to hear." Helena Cassadine
"The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- they are the pillars of society." Henrik Ibsen
"I would rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth as I see it, than of holding all the offices that capital has to give from the presidency down." Henry Brooks Adams
"He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it." Henry George
"It is not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true." Henry Kissinger
"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” Henry Kissinger
"Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge.” Henry Miller, The Books in My Life
"Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season." Heraclitus
"The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear." Herbert Sebastien Agar
"Truth and roses have thorns about them." H.G Bohn, 1855
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the greatest liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth." H.L. Mencken
"If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them." Isaac Asimov
"I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error." James A. Garfield
"People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction." James Baldwin
"Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited." James Cardinal Gibbons
"Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives." James Madison
"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness." James Thurber
"My principle aim has been to determine the reason people so often neglect the factual information available to them and prefer to base their conceptions and indeed their actions on false information, even though it is often against their best interest to do so." Jean Francois Revel, from his book The Flight from Truth
"The falsification of history has done more to impede human development than any one thing known to mankind." Jean Jacques Rousseau
"The media claims patriotic Americans & Texians who demand the government to abide by the Constitution are terrorists, when in fact, their activities are that of activists which are those. We who inform & share information. The government is terrified because they know these activists speak the truth." Jeffrey Stuart Katz
"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable." Jim Davis
"The main thing is to have a soul that loves the truth and harbours it where he finds it. And another thing: truth requires constant repetition, because error is being preached about us all the time, and not only by isolated individuals but by the masses. In the newspapers and encyclopedias, in schools and universities, everywhere error rides high and basks in the consciousness of having the majority on its side." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing." John Adams
"We find few historians who have been diligent enough in their search for truth; it is their common method to take on trust what they help distribute to the public; by which means a falsehood once received from a famed writer becomes traditional to posterity." John Dryden
"Fear not the truth for the lack of people walking on it." John Fitzgerald Kennedy
"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people." John F. Kennedy
"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity. Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities. Outlawed by all governments everywhere. Possession is normally punishable by death." John Gilmore
"History's most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with truth.” John Langbein in Alfred McCoy, A QUESTION OF TORTURE (2006) p. 204
"New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common." John Locke
"They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness.” John Milton
"When a man who is honestly mistaken hears the truth, he will either quit being mistaken or cease to be honest." John Thomas
"In the end the truth will conquer." John Wycliff, 1381
"The first goal and primary function of the U.S. public school is not to educate good people, but good citizens. It is the function which we call - in enemy nations - 'state indoctrination.'" Jonathan Kozol
"As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand." Josh Billings
"The trouble with most folks isn't so much their ignorance, as knowing so many things that ain't so." Josh Billings
"Fraud may consist as well in the suppression of what is true as in the representation of what is false. If a man professing to answer a question, select those facts only which are likely to give a credit to the person of whom he speaks, and keep back the rest, he is a more artful knave than he who tells a direct falsehood." Justice Heath
"Man is deeply vulnerable when faced with overwhelming evil. Instead of consolidating his energy to fight it, he wastes valuable time and effort puzzling over it, insisting it is not, cannot possibly be, what it seems." Konnilyn G. Feig
"Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." Laurens van der Post
"Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness." Leonardo da Vinci
"The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions." Leonardo da Vinci
"I know very well that because I am unlettered some presumptuous people will think they have the right to criticize me, saying that I am an uncultured man. What stupid fools! Do they not know that I could reply to them as Marius did to the Roman patricians: "Do those who pride themselves on the works of other men claim to challenge mine?'" Leonardo Da Vinci
"Man discovers truth by reason only, not by faith." Leo Tolstoy, 1887
"Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity." Lord Acton
"In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.” - Mark Twain
"It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled." Mark Twain
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity.” Marshall McLuhan
"It is precisely because education is the road to equality and citizenship, that it has been made more elusive for Negroes than many other rights. The walling off of Negroes from equal education is part of the historical design to submerge him in second class status. Therefore, as Negroes have struggled to be free they have had to fight for the opportunity for a decent education." Martin Luther King Jr.
"Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Martin Luther King Jr.
"Our Lives begin to end, the day we become silent about the things that matter." Martin Luther King
"It requires courage to utter truth; for the higher Truth lifts her voice, the louder will error scream, until its inarticulate sound is forever silenced in oblivion." Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Science
"The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next." Matthew Arnold
"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information, and religions destroy spirituality." Michael Ellner
"The mark of a stupid man is not that he does not know, it is that he does not want to know." Michael H. Keehn
"If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field." Michel De Montaigne
"If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." Molly Ivins
"The Matrix is a system, Neo, and that system is our enemy. When you are inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds we are trying to save. Until we do, these people are part of that system and that makes them our enemies. You have to understand that most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many are so hopelessly dependent on the system, they’ll fight to protect it. "The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” Morpheus, in the movie, "The Matrix”
"The noble task of Revisionism is to de-bamboozel; to penetrate the fog of lies and deception of the State and its Court Intellectuals, and to present to the public the true history of the motivation, the nature, and the consequences of State activity." Murray N. Rothbard
"Free speech is essential to education, especially to a liberal education, which encourages the search for truths in art and science. If expression is restricted, the range of inquiry is also curtailed... The beneficiaries of a free society have a duty to pursue the truth and to protect the freedom of expression that makes possible the search for a new enlightenment." Norman Dorsen
"Yes; truth blends well with untruth. It is one of the maladies of our age, a sign of sheer nervousness, to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake." Norman Douglas
"A mind once stretched by a new idea never regains its original dimensions." Oliver Wendell Holmes
"Telling the truth and making someone cry is better than telling a lie and making someone smile." Paolo Coelho
"It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things, which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? " Patrick Henry
"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
"The key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning, for by doubting we are led to question and by questioning we arrive at the truth." Peter Abelard
"The path to the peak is arduous, but it has always been that way. It is the path of truth through a valley of lies." Peter Ragnar
"..It is not good for a soul to be without knowledge," Prov 19:2
"The reality is, if we tell the truth, we only have to tell the truth once. If you lie, you have to keep lying forever." Rabbi Wayne Dosick
"People only see what they are prepared to see." Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no knowledge that is not power.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
"As for joy, you cannot separate joy from truth. There is no joy in ignoring or denying truth. The rejection of truth is the rejection of joy. And by embracing truth, even truth that is difficult and unpleasant, we are made ready to really embrace joy." Randy Alcorn
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." Rene Descartes
"Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence." Richard Dawkins
"The real searcher after truth will not receive the old because it is old, or reject the new because it is new. He will not believe men because they are dead, or contradict them because they are alive. With him an utterance is worth the truth, the reason it contains, without the slightest regard to the author. He may have been a king or serf -- a philosopher or servant, -- but the utterance neither gains nor loses in truth or reason. Its value is absolutely independent of the fame or station of the man who gave it to the world." Robert G. Ingersoll
"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." - Robert Heinlein
"There are in fact four very significant stumblingblocks in the way of grasping the truth, which hinder every man however learned, and scarcely allow anyone to win a clear title to wisdom, namely, the example of weak and unworthy authority, longstanding custom, the feeling of the ignorant crowd, and the hiding of our own ignorance while making a display of our apparent knowledge." Roger Bacon
"Among the innumerable mortifications which waylay human arrogance on every side may well be reckoned our ignorance of the most common objects and effects, a defect of which we become more sensible by every attempt to supply it. Vulgar and inactive minds confound familiarity with knowledge and conceive themselves informed of the whole nature of things when they are shown their form or told their use; but the speculatist, who is not content with superficial views, harasses himself with fruitless curiosity, and still, as he inquires more, perceives only that he knows less." Dr. Samuel Johnson
"In order that all men might be taught to speak truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it." Dr. Samuel Johnson
"Knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful." Dr. Samuel Johnson
"Mankind have a great aversion to intellectual labor; but even supposing knowledge to be easily attainable, more people would be content to be ignorant than would take even a little trouble to acquire it." Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784), quoted in Boswell's Life of Johnson
"There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself." Dr. Samuel Johnson
"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed. Finally it is accepted as self-evident." Schoepenhouer
"This is, in theory, still a free country, but our politically correct, censorious times are such that many of us tremble to give vent to perfectly acceptable views for fear of condemnation. Freedom of speech is thereby imperiled, big questions go undebated, and great lies become accepted, unequivocally as great truths." Simon Heffer
"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion -- and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority." Soren Kierkegaard
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." Stephen Hawking
