Baltasar Gracian Quotes
Lies always come first, dragging fools along by their irreparable vulgarity. Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of time.
Gracian, Baltasar. The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle. Translated by Christopher Maurer, Currency Doubleday, 1992, p. 83.
See {115604} for a similar sentiment from England.
Cicely Isabel Fairfield
One classic example was the fact that in 2012 about one third of Republicans believed that President Obama was a Muslim when he was a devout Christian. The infamous lie had 3 grains of truth: Obama’s father was a Muslim. his middle name was an Islamic name. and he had lived and gone to school as a young boy in Indonesia, the largest Islamic country.
The Presidential Campaigns of 2008 and 2012 shocked many Americans for the blatant lies that opponents of President Obama wrote and broadcast and then some of the retaliatory lies that Obama defenders responded with. However, this quotation from a 19th century political historian shows us that blatant lying in American politics is not at all new.
Baltasar Gracián y Morales, S.J., better known as Baltasar Gracián, was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque prose writer and philosopher. He was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon). His writings were lauded by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche.
