With fake news running wild, how do we know what’s true? Here’s what William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, George R. R. Martin and others have to say.
There was a great historian lost in Wolverstone. He had the right imagination that knows just how far it is safe to stray from the truth and just how far to colour it so as to change its shape for his own purposes. ~ Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
“Truth is like a thrashing-machine; tender sensibilities must keep out of the way.” ~ The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville
You’ll find truth in your looking glass, not on the tongues of men. ~ A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. ~ Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
“It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” ~ The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
“Journalists say a thing that they know isn’t true, in the hope that if they keep on saying it long enough it will be true.” ~ The Title by Arnold Bennett
People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it’s served up. ~ A Clash of Kings by George R. R. Martin
“I make no manner of doubt that you threw a very diamond of truth at me, though you see it hit me so directly in the face that it wasn’t exactly appreciated, at first.” ~ Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. ~ The Professor at the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
“For truth is truth to the end of reckoning.” ~ Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
