Winston Churchill: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter."
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Maggie: Truth! Truth! Everybody keeps hollerin' about the truth. Well, the truth is as dirty as lies.
Brick: Can you face the truth...?
Big Daddy: Try me!
Brick: You or somebody else's truth?
Big Daddy: Bull. You're runnin' again.
Brick: Yeah, I am runnin'. Runnin' from lies, lies like birthday congratulations and many happy returns of the day when there won't be any.
JFK: "The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."
Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
Scott Simon: “A supporter once called out, ‘Governor Stevenson, all thinking people are for you!’ And Adlai Stevenson answered, ‘That’s not enough. I need a majority.’ "
Nikita S. Khrushchev (as remembered by Richard Nixon) “If the people believe there’s an imaginary river out there, you don’t tell them there’s no river there. You build an imaginary bridge over the imaginary river.”
Slogan of Larry 'Lonesome' Rhodes in the movie, A Face in the Crowd: "There's nothing as trustworthy ... as the ordinary mind of the ordinary man."
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Don’t shoot too high, aim lower, and the common people will understand you.”
Eric Rauchway: "Karl Rove deserves to be remembered as the man who thought Americans should have enough education to understand his fables but not enough to doubt them.”
Arthur Ponsonby in Falsehood in Wartime: Propaganda Lies of the First World War (1928) : “Whenever war is declared, truth is the first casualty.”
Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn: "Hain't we got all the fools in town on our side? And hain't that a big enough majority in any town?"
