Dorothy Allison Quotes

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

I soon discovered, after I became chairman of the NEH, that, for a number of academics, the truth was not merely irrelevant - it no longer existed.

I can't tell a lie - not even when I hear one.

One tells as few lies as possible only by telling as few lies as possible, and not by having the least possible opportunity to do so.

I've tried to do away with lying in my life in the last few years, but it's hard.

I've never fabricated or plagiarized anything.

Within the confines of the lecture hall, no other virtue exists but plain intellectual integrity.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

There is no such thing as a good writer and a bad liar.

It is not right or manly to lie even about Satan.

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded and disbursed only when absolutely necessary. The smallest atom of truth represents some man's bitter toil and agony; for every ponderable chunk of it there is a brave truth-seeker's grave upon some lonely ash-dump and a soul roasting in Hell.

George Washington was the president who could never tell a lie, and Richard Nixon was the president who could never tell the truth. Donald Trump is truly the president who can't tell the difference.

I wanted to ask a thousand questions, but there was no one to ask. Besides I knew that people only told lies to children-lies about everything from soup to Santa Claus.

Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.

If you tell a lie, always rehearse it. If it don't sound good to you, it won't sound good to anybody.

It is, perhaps, a debatable question, whether a person who has always been notoriously in the habit of lying, has a right to tell the truth; it is, of course, the only device by which he can deceive people.

Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth.

We obviously need the truth. We're living in a country of lies.

I don't know what it's going to take for people to really wake up and understand that they [the Bush administration] are liars and they are murderers.

If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.

The writer's first job is not to have opinions but to tell the truth... and refuse to be an accomplice of lies and misinformation. Literature is the house of nuance and contrariness against the voices of simplification.

Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.

I'm planning, you see, to try to confine myself to the truth. That's hard for an old, inveterate fantasy martyr and liar who has never hesitated to give truth the form he felt the occasion demanded.

Do not lie to the Scholar.

A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher.