The Truth

True until tomorrow is good enough for me.

Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions

There are some thoughts too dreadful to think

Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day

Apparently, they say, a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on

Truth was what he told. Honesty was sometimes not the same thing.

“He’s a policeman. The truth usually confuses them. They don’t often hear it.”

The brain works fast when it thinks it is about to be cut in half.

People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things . . . well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.

He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where “traditional values” meant “hang someone.”