JEAN-LÉON GÉROME

The Lie said to the Truth-
"Let's take a bath together,
the well water is very nice.

The Truth, still suspicious,
tested the water and found out
it really was nice.

So they got naked and bathed.

But suddenly, the Lie leapt out of the water
and fled, wearing the clothes of the Truth.
The Truth, furious, climbed out of the well
to get her clothes back.

But the World, upon seeing the naked Truth,
looked away, with anger and contempt.

Poor Truth returned to the well and disappeared
forever, hiding her shame.

Since then, the Lie runs around the world,
dressed as the Truth, and society is very happy.
Because the world has no desire to know
the naked Truth.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

There is the great danger and the great difference. France is a country and Great Britain is several countries but Italy is a man, Mussolini, and Germany is a man, Hitler.

A man has ambitions, a man rules until he gets into economic trouble; he tries to get out of this trouble by war. A country never wants war until a man through the power of propaganda convinces it.

Propaganda is stronger now than it has ever been before. Its agencies have been mechanized, multiplied and controlled until, in a state ruled by any one man, truth can never be presented.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination

____________________

The exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent, not universal, not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into question, imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truth teller.

DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
____________________

Very few people really care about freedom, about liberty, about the truth, very few. Very few people have guts, the kind of guts on which a real democracy has to depend. Without people with that sort of guts a free society dies or cannot be born.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR

____________________

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

JEAN COCTEAU

I have always preferred mythology to history. Because history is made up of truth which eventually turn into lies. Mythology is made of up lies which eventually become truth.

FANNIE LOU HAMER

Sometimes it seem like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I’ll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I’m not backing off.