Harry Frankfurt Quotes

Bullshit is unavoidable when circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus, the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled-whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves.

It is a shame when nonsense can substitute for fact with impunity.

It is better to know nothing than to know what ain't so.

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.

You'd better not know so much, than to know so many things that ain't so.

Lying rumours do not penetrate farther than our ears.

Stupidity is active in every direction, and can dress up in all the clothes of truth. Truth, on the other hand, has for every occasion only one dress and one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

Bullshit is truly the American soundtrack.

Falsehood, like the dry-rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.

Elvis is English, and climbs the hills. Can't tell the bullshit from the lies.

I don't like people that make their living talking about bullshit, and you see them in many shows that are made on the same subject. When you go looking at UFOs or bigfoot or what-have-you, there's just nothing there.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

We are looking at a lot of dishonest news that comes across where people are lying outrageously about other people. And I hope that folks on all sides could say, "Look, I disagree with him or her, but that is an outrageous lie."

And it's a necessity [for journalists] to pretend to be competent on every subject, some of which they really do not understand. They are under that necessity, I regret; I'm sorry for them. But to pretend to understand all the things you write about, and habitually to write about things you do not understand, is a very corrupting thing.

As far as the Council is concerned, the U.S. Wardens are a bunch of mushrooms." "Eh?" "Kept in the dark and fed on bullshit.

I'm reliable sources, I'll tell ya anything you want me to know.

Money talks, bullshit walks.

It's not ignorance does so much damage; it's knowin' so derned much that ain't so.

It's all bullshit, folks and it's bad for ya.

Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

We are now debating and talking about a story [Russian hacker attack] based on something that isn't true.

What really bothers me, what gets me mad, is when people don't know the story, but then pretend like they know the story. That's what bothers me. That's what makes me mad.