John Amery Quotes

Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth.

Nothing that lived and breathed was truly objective—even in a vacuum, even if all that possessed the brain was a self-immolating desire for the truth.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

I don't know if there's such a thing as objectivity.

Belief is a very peculiar thing: we tend to put more store in a belief we like than a fact we hate.

When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.

Be able to notice all the confusion between fact and opinion that appears in the news.

Recognizing truth requires selflessness. You have to leave yourself out of it so you can find out the way things are in themselves, not the way they look to you or how you feel about them or how you would like them to be.

Once we thought, journalists and readers alike, that if we put together enough 'facts' and gave them a fast stir, we would come up with something that, at least by the standards of short-order cooks, could be called the truth.

Complete objectivity is not an option. We are all subjective about the way we respond to 'what is,' whether it's the people we encounter, the circumstances in our lives, or ourselves. What we can do is reduce our subjectivity - what I call 'I see, therefore it is.'

Writers and politicians don't think the same. They define truth differently.

Conservatives need to go where the facts, not ideology, take them.

There is no standard for truth. We cannot even agree on the meaning of words.

You will never succeed in getting at the truth if you know, ahead of time, what the truth ought to be

It is necessary to judge accurately the things that rest on opinion

Objectivity in the end is an unattainable ideal.

In time of war what is said on the enemy's side of the front is always propaganda and what is said on our side of the front is truth and righteousness, the cause of humanity and a crusade for peace.

I think what happens is when we start to look at the facts, everybody has their impression of what truth is.

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?

What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth.

There has been far too much of journalists deciding they are on the side of something and going out to get the story, instead of truth seeking which is a different thing.

I have been saying this from the beginning: people are going to say whatever they want to say or believe whatever they want to believe. I say this to people: stick to the facts.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Historians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced; and neither interest nor fear, hatred nor affection, should make them swerve from the way of truth.

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.