Robert Musil Quotes

Error is always more busy than truth.

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

No one who lives in error is free.

If you understand everything, you must be misinformed.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

Error is certainty's constant companion. Error is the corollary of evidence. And anything said about truth may equally well be said about error: the delusion will be no greater.

Most of humanity, he said, have eyes that are so caked shut with the dust of deception they will never see the truth, no matter who tries to help them.

When we believe in lies, we cannot see the truth, so we make thousands of assumptions and we take them as truth. One of the biggest assumptions we make is that the lies we believe are the truth!

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.

One wanders to the left, another to the right. Both are equally in error, but, are seduced by different delusions.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it is that half of them are true.

We live in a world of denial, and we don't know what the truth is anymore.

It's so easy for us to misperceive and see the things in others that we want to see. And, when we're wrong, and often we're dead wrong, we miss the truth.

The trouble with half-truths is you never know which half you've got.

… fear false knowledge

Belief and seeing: They are both often wrong.

He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.

Whatever is almost true is quite false, and among the most dangerous of errors, because being so near truth, it is more likely to lead astray.

The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true or the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.

...a truth you don't understand is more dangerous than a lie.

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

People are just dumb. They misunderstand.