Harry Frankfurt Quotes
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm always trying to do the impossible to please people. It comes from not being secure in myself and not looking at the things within I have to fix. Sometimes you keep going because you don't want to face the truth.
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When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion. The complex is made over into the simple, the hypothetical into the dogmatic, and the relative into an absolute.
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People talk about 'getting rid of the old image', and I guess there's some merit in that. But the truth is that people loved 'The Wonder Years' - I can't turn my back on it.
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Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.
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I used to be more paranoid and stressed, constantly worrying about my Plan B. But the truth is I don't have one.
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Of all liars the most arrogant are biographers: those who would have us believe, having surveyed a few boxes full of letters, diaries, bank statements and photographs, that they can play at the recording angel and tell the whole truth about another human life.
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Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
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Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
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At pivotal moments throughout history, there have always been grey areas, and there likely will be in the future. Courage now lies not in the black and white, as in the past, but in the grey.
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I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.
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Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous.
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Your assumption, and the truth, dine at totally separate tables.
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Truth never was indebted to a lie.
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Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.
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A man should be jailed for telling lies to the young.
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Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances. Care for distress at home and care for distress elsewhere do but help each other if, working together, they wake men in sufficient numbers from their thoughtlessness, and call into life a new spirit of humanity.
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He who died at Azan sendsThis to comfort all his friends:-Faithful friends! It lies I knowPale and white and cold as snow;And ye say, 'Abdallah’s dead!'Weeping at the feet and head.I can see your falling tears,I can hear your sighs and prayers;Yet I smile and whisper this:I am not the thing you kiss.Cease your tears and let it lie;It was mine-it is not I.
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Only the broken-hearted know the truth about love.
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I always have a rule that acting is acting and truth is truth and you just go out there and you do it. But what happens in each medium is that you have other responsibilities. The acting remains the same, but each medium dictates assuming other halves to make the acting work.
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The ultimate freedom depends on knowing the ultimate Truth. Truth is not what people say it is, it is what it is. And Truth, quite remarkably, sets one free, just like philosophers have said down the ages.
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It is the knowledge that all men have weaknesses and that many have vices that makes government necessary.
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As an elephant in the battlefield withstands arrows shot from bows all around, even so shall I endure abuse.
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Senator Obama's support among hardworking Americans - white Americans - is weakening.
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It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.
