Truth
Sober reason demands truth because any reasonable approach to a problem has to be based on fact. Therefore, disregard for truth promotes irresponsibility.
Philosophers and political leaders -- serious and wise people -- have felt the need to say serious and wise things about The Truth.
Their important reminders emphasize these four themes.
(1) For adults, courageously facing a truth is the necessary prelude to the most significant self improvement.
(2) Truths persist independent of human desire.
(3) Truths establish this objective reality. Humans have overwhelming reasons to choose to live in a society that requiries reasonable cooperation and sharing.
(4) Honesty enables progressive society.
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
Tom Paine:It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.
A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all...
Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich... All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.
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It is my view that belief is the underlying and basic element of policy and action.
[This is the definition of ‘rational.’]
Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
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The road to peace must be built on the truth.
Truth itself is beyond all human authority.
Penn Jillette:[Y]ou cannot have community, you cannot have love unless you have a shared reality. And anything that comes from within, any revelation that comes from within by definition can't be shared. So what science did for us mostly was science gave us a reality that we could share and talk about. So if I feel the presence of my dead mother with me that's personal; that's poetic. But if I'm going to actually talk about what death means we have to go with things that we've proven. And proof has been given such a hard cold kind of connotation; whereas another way to say proof is just something you can share. It's another way to say love! If I believe there's a God in the universe and I can't prove it, I have said nothing to the community. If I think there's such a thing as black holes and I can give some evidence to that, that's a way of showing love for other people.
The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing.
I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.
A house divided against itself cannot stand.
Let us have faith that right makes might...
Here, Right Matters.
Integrity Counts.
The supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible...
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.
Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.
When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, ...he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must... sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy; but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly.
Antony Flew:Do I sincerely want to be right?
No man who is indifferent to argument and to evidence can claim to be concerned for truth. Abriham Lincoln was profoundly right when he wrote, chiding the editor of a Springfield newspaper: ‘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.’
To the extent that I make claims to knowledge without ensuring that I am indeed in a position to know, I must prejudice my claims both to sincerity and to ingenuousness.
W. K. Clifford:If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest. What hurts society is not that it should lose its property, but that it should become a den of thieves, for then it must cease to be society... In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.
[ Before the Enlightenment there were mostly ‘dark’ ages of ignorance and totalitarian authoritarianism supported by dogmatism. Jacob Bronowski notes that society prospers when it's members are able to rely on each other to discover and to disseminate new truths. ]
Jacob Bronowski:Those who think that science is ethically neutral confuse the findings of science, which are, with the activity of science, which is not.
As a set of discoveries and devices, science has mastered nature; but it has been able to do so only because it's values, which derive from its method, have formed those who practice it into a living, stable and incorruptable society.
The social axium is that
We ought to act in such a way that what is true can be verified to be so.In the society of scientists each man, by the process of exploring for the truth, has earned a dignity more profound than his doctrine. A true society is sustained by the sense of human dignity.
This is an empirical fact: We have to act civilized because we need each other! Our reasonable nature lets us naturally cooperate in a civilized way. But huge problems occur when thinking is perverted by lies or nonsense.
Unlike faith, evidence builds consensus because responsible people demand evidence, and reasonable people face facts. When confronted with evidence, good people do the right thing.
If you care about truth, you should want to eliminate falacious reasoning. Wittgenstein did the most to show how not to be falacious.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
One of the symptoms of Trumpism, frankly, of authoritarianism generally, is the obligation to lie. You're not on the team. You're not in the club. You're not part of the movement, if you're not willing to lie for it.
“MAGA world decided that no crimes were committed that day. Well, that's new. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz described those crimes as "A violent terrorist attack on the Capitol." At the time, Senator John Cornyn said, "Those who, planned and participated in the violence that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." At the time, Senator Josh Hawley said, "Those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted." ... Vice President Vance said, "If you committed violence on January 6, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned."
Cheaters Must Lie 1:45
“MAGA world decided that no crimes were committed that day. Well, that's new. At the time, Senator Ted Cruz described those crimes as "A violent terrorist attack on the Capitol." At the time, Senator John Cornyn said, "Those who, planned and participated in the violence that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." At the time, Senator Josh Hawley said, "Those who attacked police and broke the law must be prosecuted." ... Vice President Vance said, "If you committed violence on January 6, obviously, you shouldn't be pardoned."
Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique.
[W]hen people in power invent their own facts and attack those who question them, it can mark the beginning of the end of a free society. That is not hyperbole. It is what authoritarian regimes throughout history have done. They attempt to control reality. Not just our laws and our rights and our budgets, but our thoughts and beliefs.