George Bancroft Quotes

People are just obsessed with other people's lives. I don't know whether it's kind of a way to escape their own, or something to follow... I really couldn't tell you.

I love rumors. It gives me something to think about and enjoy.

Life would be boring without gossip.

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.

The idea of future or past, either way, is a core part of entertainment. It's something we've always loved as humans. Its part of our psyche, I think.

With prurient absorption and only minimal risk, we can pretend to be the subject of the lead article on the front page of the Style section of our local newspaper for as long as it takes to finish our morning coffee.

People don't really want to know what happens. They ask you for just a second, but then they don't want to know.

Truth is, I'll never know all there is to know about you just as you will never know all there is to know about me. Humans are by nature too complicated to be understood fully. So, we can choose either to approach our fellow human beings with suspicion or to approach them with an open mind, a dash of optimism and a great deal of candour.

Getting bored is not allowed.

Gossip is more popular than literature.

Fiction basically is a form of gossip where you want to enter other people's lives, the lives of people you don't know, and you want to know what's going to happen to them.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

Kids need stuff which is different than what their life is that they can kind of live through.

We live in a world of denial, and we don't know what the truth is anymore.

Gossip can be entertaining: occasionally, I've heard the most fascinating things about myself I never knew.

I'd rather proliferate funny little rumors than not.

For my part, I confess I seldom listen to the players: one has so much to do, in looking about and finding out one's acquaintance, that, really, one has no time to mind the stage. One merely comes to meet one's friends, and show that one's alive.

My whole thing is to entertain, make people laugh and to forget about the real world for awhile.

The saloonkeeper is the only man who keeps open house in the ward. It is his business to entertain. It does not matter that he does not select his guests; that convention is useless among them. In fact, his democracy is one element of his strength. His face is the common meeting ground of his neighbors—and he supplies the stimulus which renders social life possible; there is an accretion of intelligence that comes to him in his business. He hears the best stories. He is the first to get accurate information as to the latest political deals and social mysteries. The common talk of the day passes through his ears and he is known to retain that which is the most interesting.

For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

None of us are gossips, but we love listening to those who are.

The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth.

The majority of men prefer delusion to truth. It soothes. It is easy to grasp. Above all, it fits more snugly than the truth into a universe of false appearances—of complex and irrational phenomena, defectively grasped.

Books are wonderful. They are like people, except they mind less when you put them down and wander off to eat something.

Comedy gives you a shot of euphoria that distracts you from everything that's awful.