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]
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Google’s Ngram Viewer Finds No Citations
Google’s Ngram Viewer allows one to search for words and phrases in the millions of books digitized by Google. It covers the years until 2000. It finds not a single citation of the dubious Goebbels quotation. Proving a negative is impossible, but this is still further evidence of the unlikelihood of the quotation.
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