Jonathan Swift Quotes

Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.

A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth has time to put its boots on.

Lying in the political sphere has gotten out of hand, and because people tend to dismiss things that challenge their preconceived notions of the world, fact checkers can only play a small part in remedying the problem.

There is no rest stop on the misinformation highway.

It used to be that we disagreed over the basic facts we were fighting over, and we had different opinions about them. Now I think we accept different sources of authority. ... And people can establish credibility on their own say-so as long as nobody follows the trail and calls them out on it.

We must combat misinformation that is being spread.

Journalists, who are skeptical to begin with, simply do not like to be lied to or made fools of.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Errors, to be dangerous, must have a great deal of truth mingled with them. It is only from this alliance that they can ever obtain an extensive circulation.

We live in such a gullible world. Anything that's written, anything that's posted, anything picture that is interpreted one way is taken as truth.

You may have read that I went to M.I.T. In 1982 I filled out a Who's Who survey with joking responses, and they never bothered to check the facts.

In the world of the Internet, there are many falsehoods. Anyone can write stuff on Wikipedia, and it doesn't have to be true.

Some people believe everything they see on TV. People, it's called tel-lie-vision!

Lies are beginning to be solidified and made into historical fact…. The truth is all I want for history.

In politics there is a lot of spin—a lot of BS. My job is to cut through the BS.

An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious—just dead wrong.

Search engines take misinformation and put it into our echo chamber. Trying to counter it is the functional equivalent of having your hair full of honey and bees and your trying to whack the bees with your hands.

If you want truth to go around the world you must hire an express train to pull it; but if you want a lie to go around the world, it will fly; it is light as a feather and a breath will carry it.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don't think much of the rest of the newspaper.

Unfortunately, often found next to things that are true are an enormous number of things that are not - in websites, videos, books and on social media.

The thing about rumors is that everyone believes something about them, even if they are completely unfounded.

You can't believe everything you hear on the Internet.

False speech does harm to readers, who are misled by it; it does harm to journalism, which is weakened by it; and it does harm to the subjects of the speech, whose reputations and careers are damaged by it.

There's all sorts of rumors... there's so many variables there. And I've learned with AC/DC also not to believe the rumors, because even fans fake things.

It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false.