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]
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
A Good Site on Bad Quotations
While reading an article on dubious quotations by Corey Robin in the 20 September 2013 issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education, I learned of a blog devoted to what he calls WAS — Wrongly Attributed Statements. It’s a blog worth following.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
Sighting Report #10
It’s bad enough having hundreds of thousands of web pages spreading the false Goebbels quotation, but people can even proclaim their gullibility by wearing a t-shirt with the phrase.
A t-shirt company offers Sarah Palin against a Nazi backdrop with the quotation “Truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
And you can also get the quotation on a bumper sticker, courtesy of e-Bay.
A t-shirt company offers Sarah Palin against a Nazi backdrop with the quotation “Truth is the greatest enemy of the state.”
And you can also get the quotation on a bumper sticker, courtesy of e-Bay.
Tracking Report #7
A Google search on 11 September 2013 finds 379,000 hits for the phrase “truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Bing, which last time returned only 8,500 hits, now claims 17,000,000. That can’t be right, so I'll check again in a few days. The Google total is almost exactly the same as it was back in May 2013.