Journalists used to be raffish and amusing liars, and they are no longer raffish or amusing.
Sep 112019
Lying
To a quite unwreckable Lie,
To a most impeccable Lie!
To a water-tight, fire-proof, angle-iron, sunk-hinge, time-lock, steel-faced Lie!
Not a private hansom Lie,
But a pair-and-brougham Lie,
Not a little-place-at-Tooting, but a country-house-with-shooting
And a ring-fence-deer-park Lie.
—-Kipling
Sep 042019
Never confess at the show trial. They shoot you anyway, then kill your wife and children.
Sep 022019
A truth is sometimes told in public, but almost always by accident.
Aug 062019
“Be honest”: An injunction to lie.
Aug 022019
A little truth, hard-won, can last a man for life. It is lies and nonsense for which a tolerance soon becomes a taste, a taste an appetite, and an appetite at last an insatiable craving.
Jul 242019
To learn the status of an identity, count how many people fake it.
Jul 232019
It isn’t true.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true.
No one should talk about it.
Why are you talking about it?
Jul 122019
The more obvious the truth, the more severely its utterance is punished.
Jun 282019
For those who flatter us we have many nasty names, but never liar.
Jun 242019
The idea that smoke implies fire cannot survive a professional class of industrious smoke merchants.