Let’s be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus.
Category: truth
No thirst for truth in the masses
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduces them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Hiding the truth
The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.
Truth during war
In a time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda.
Freedom, reason, and the slavery of fear
Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think.
The real tragedy of life
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
False words
False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.
Give me truth
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
Honesty isn’t always pretty
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
The big lie
In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.