Robert J. Flaherty Quotes

A historian who would convey the truth must lie. Often he must enlarge the truth by diameters, otherwise his reader would not be able to see it.

You can be very honest without telling the truth, at least in art.

I am interested in making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see.

It's okay to lie as long as you reach a higher truth doing it.

White lies always introduce others of a darker complexion.

You can read everybody. It's not even interesting to tell the truth because to some extent it's false.

But little white lies here and there is human nature. Everybody does that.

The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.

It is perhaps being economical with the truth.

Of course there's conscious manipulation! Everything about a movie is manipulation ... If you like it, it's an interpretation. If you don't like it, it's a lie - but everything about these movies is a distortion."

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what they think is there.

There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn't necessarily a lie even if it didn't necessarily happen.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

If you tell a lie to make a person better, then that is not a sin.

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

He could have made it right with the book. But he hasn't. He is a revisionist of history. He has lied.

There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

I have no problem twisting the facts if it's the only way I can be true to the moment.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

I suppose everyone tells little white lies. Quite often they're necessary to make someone feel better or prevent feelings from being hurt. Whoppers? No, that's dangerous and they'll boomerang.

A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

There are two ways of lying. One, not telling the truth and the other, making up statistics.

Unfortunately, as much as I am gullible, I also hate lying. I tend to tell the truth a lot... lying just isn't worth it. But I think I'm guilty of telling people that I'm 5 minutes away when really I'm about 45 or an hour away.

If you take a lie and allow your desire for the truth, you'll end up with some truth - not fact, but something that gets you closer to the truth. That's what we want. When we go to a play, we need to be assured that the experience we're having.

Rarely has reality needed so much to be imagined.