I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.
Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.
If you don't think a television news show represents the truth, you can turn off your TV. If you don't think a magazine represents the truth, you can cancel your subscription. You have the right to expose yourself to whatever information you want. But to have the government prescribing what the truth is or limiting the information available for the citizen is contrary to the 1st Amendment.
Poetry implies the whole truth. Philosophy expresses a particle of it.
Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful cannot lead to all truths.
I would be lying if I said the journalism doesn't reflect my own choices as a reporter and a writer: what to say, what to emphasize, how to say it, what is true or untrue.
Words have great cumulative power, but in the 21st century, a single image is much stronger. An image suggests the unvarnished truth. That is its power and its fiction.
What is truth in photography? It can be told in a hundred different ways. Every thirtieth of a second when the shutter snaps, its capturing a different piece of information.
The talent of historians lies in their creating a true ensemble out of facts which are but half true.
Artists also have the responsibility of reflecting the truth.
Film is 24 lies per second at the service of truth, or at the service of the attempt to find the truth.
Sometimes a novelist can get closer to the truth than the historian can.
There are people who are bound journalistically to a code of ethics that means they can't quote something that isn't sourced, whereas what I do is entirely unsourced. I effectively fictionalise history and yet somehow aim at a greater truth.
Objectivity is the purpose of documentary filmmakers.
There can be no literary equivalent to truth.
There is no truth in photography. One can't reproduce an absolute truth. That said, I don't see [my photographs] as being any less truthful than any other photographs.
Artists are the gatekeepers of truth.
I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.
Poetry is not an assertion of truth, but the making of that truth more fully real to us.
If you want to convey fact, this can only ever be done through a form of distortion. You must distort to transform what is called appearance into image.
The point is that a filmmaker is like a journalist in projecting reality in the true sense of the word. Only thing is he dramatically packages it to make more effect.
I have to conclude that fiction is better at 'the truth' than a factual record.
Although humans see reality in colour, for me, black and white has always been connected to the image's deeper truth, to its most hidden meaning.
The theatre, for all its artifices, depicts life in a sense more truly than history, because the medium has a kindred movement to that of real life, though an artificial setting and form.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
