Stephen Leacock Quotes

Half truths were a wonderful way to inspire credibility.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Parliament must not be told a direct untruth, but it's quite possible to allow them to mislead themselves.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.

Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.

Propaganda is the art of persuading others of what one does not believe oneself.

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

Selective truth

Nothing is so difficult to believe that oratory cannot make it acceptable …

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

Half-truths are worth more than outright lies.

It's a big mistake to try and mislead people. They will turn around.

There wasn't any more truth in over half of what any so-called orator said. If it wasn't a Deliberate Lie, why it was an Exaggerated Falsehood.

This much is true: you have been lied to.

Read between the lines, folks, 'cause I'm here to tell you you're not getting the straight story. Ever. You're getting variations of the truth, if you're lucky.

We are oftener deceived by being told some truth than no truth.

A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.

I have always loved truth so passionately that I have often resorted to lying as a way of introducing it into the minds which were ignorant of its charms.

I always sensed instinctively from the earliest age that I was being lied to.

We continually say things to support an opinion, which we have given, that in reality we don't above half mean.

I can not think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.

Propaganda, to be effective, must be believed. To be believed, it must be credible. To be credible, it must be true.