distorted truth Quotes

Do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history “a fable” not quite “agreed upon”? Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.”

History, sir, will tell lies as usual.

Alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

At a distance from the theatre of action, truth is not always related without embellishment, and sometimes is entirely perverted, from a misconception of the causes which produce the effects that are the subjects of censure.

The Idols of Tribe have their foundation in human nature itself, and in the tribe or race of men. For it is a false assertion that the sense of man is the measure of things. On the contrary, all perceptions as well of the sense as of the mind are according to the measure of the individual and not according to the measure of the universe. And the human understanding is like a false mirror, which, receiving rays irregularly, distorts and discolors the nature of things by mingling its own nature with it.

But men love abstract reasoning and neat systematization so much that they think nothing of distorting the truth, closing their eyes and ears to contrary evidence to preserve their logical constructions.

Falsehood, like a drawing in perspective, will not bear to be examined in every point of view, because it is a good imitation of truth, as a perspective is of the reality, only in one. But truth, like that reality of which the perspective is the representation, will bear to be scrutinized in all points of view, and though examined under every situation, is one and the same.

I do not know at first what it is that harms me. The men and things of to-day are wont to be fairer and truer in to-morrow's memory.

This is a fallen world. People lie, the truth gets distorted, and that's the way it is. What's for dinner ?

There is absolutely nothing you can learn out of one bllodeshot eye.

Believe everything you hear said of the world; nothing is too impossibly bad.

Now, since our condition accommodates things to itself, and transforms them according to itself, we no longer know things in their reality; for nothing comes to us that is not altered and falsified by our Senses. When the compass, the square, and the rule are untrue, all the calculations drawn from them, all the buildings erected by their measure, are of necessity also defective and out of plumb. The uncertainty of our senses renders uncertain everything that they produce.

But man is so addicted to systems and to abstract conclusions that he is prepared deliberately to distort the truth, to close his eyes and ears, but justify his logic at all cost.

I know that I have in my make-up layers of synthetic experiences, and that the most powerful of my memories are only half true.

I think the basic problem is that everybody thinks they know what the truth is, and sometimes they're even distorting the truth to make their arguments.

Perceptions are portraits, not photographs, and their form reveals the artist’s hand every bit as much as it reflects the things portrayed

The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Perception is created and twisted so quickly.

The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.

You can't see the world through a mirror.

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

Memories shift like loose snow in a wind, or are a chorale of ghosts all talking over one another. There is only ever a sense that what is real to me is not real to others, and to share a memory with someone is to risk sullying my belief in what has truly happened.

That is the beauty of memory, isn’t it? Our reality is always clouded by our perceptions of truth. (Mnimi)

There have been a lot of stories written about me, some of them fantastically distorted.

Sometimes when you do interviews, it gets twisted up.