“a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.”
More from George Orwell on Truth
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
“[..] the great modern commandment - the eleventh commandment which has wiped out all the others: 'Thou shalt not lose thy job.”
“Progress is not an illusion; it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.”
“It’s the one thing they can’t do. They can make you say anything – anything – but they can’t make you believe it. They can’t get inside you.”
“Big Brother is watching you.”
Others on Truth
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
11 quotes“Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.”
Cervantes
8 quotes“Facts are the enemy of truth.”
Mark Twain
8 quotes“I have a higher and grander standard of principle than George Washington. He could not lie; I can, but I won't.”
Malcolm X
7 quotes“You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.”
Terry Pratchett
7 quotes“Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.”
Aesop
7 quotes“No one believes a liar even when he tells the truth”
Agatha Christie
7 quotes“The innocent must not suffer.”
Patrick Rothfuss
7 quotes“...nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.”
H. L. Mencken
6 quotes“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.”
Frederick Douglass
6 quotes“America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future.”
Martin Luther King
6 quotes“In the end, what will hurt us the most is not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
Barbara Kingsolver
6 quotes“The urge to lie is produced by the contradictions in our lives. We are made to declare love for our country, while it tr...”