- One interesting sighting is in David Rankin's book, The Things I Wish They'd Told Me: ... as I Was Growing Up. The false quote appears on page 378 in a list of quotations about "Truth."
- R. Thomas Risk and colleagues used it on pages 228 and 229 in their book, Where We Find Ourselves: Portrait of a Modern Infidel. The book includes footnotes, but does not give a source for the Goebbel's quote.
- William Campbell Hunter, Jr., used the quote on page 138 of his 2008 Drew University doctoral dissertation on "The Value of the Filmic Encounter as a Pedagogical Tool for Empathy Promotion in Allied Health Undergraduates." He sources the quote in a footnote as follows: "Reference is being made to Joseph Goebbels the Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda."
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State. [Falsely attributed to Joseph Goebbels]
Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Sighting Report #4
Goebbel's famous non-quote about telling a lie big enough and often enough to get people to believe it is finding a home in quite a few titles on Google Books.
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