Charles Caleb Colton Quotes

Every edit is a lie.

You can't really pretend something is rosier than it is and expect people to buy it.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

For a moment, the lie becomes truth.

Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited.

Nothing is as deceptive as a photograph.

Truth does not do as much good in the world as its imitations do harm.

[...] the inevitable triumph of illusion over reality that was the single most obvious truth about the history of the human race [...]

What is false creates taste, and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic. And what is genuine is reconstructed as quickly as possible, to resemble the false.

Since I wasn't able to leave a succession of beautiful lies, I want to leave the smidgen of truth that the falsehood of everything lets us suppose we can tell.

Reality is easy. It's deception that's the hard work.

In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

I realize that nothing's as it seems.

A lie to me is a dream that might come true.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Image is what people perceive my life to be. It's nothing like the truth.

No one is ever who they purport to be.

When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

He spent his whole life in plastering together the true and the false and therefrom extracting the plausible.

Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.

The camera cannot lie. But it can be an accessory to untruth.