“Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Have you ever met someone who always tells the truth, no matter what?
The people I know that have always told the truth can be counted on one hand. And that’s being generous. In 66 years, I have met a lot of people who claim to always tell the truth. Truth be told, 99 percent of those I’ve met in my travels, flirted with truth like a coy lover.
Confession. I have lied. Most of the time I tell the truth, but there have been times when I lied. The reasons didn’t matter. A lie is a lie. That may sound harsh but it’s true. There’s no such thing as a white lie in my book.
Unless a person is a saint, they’ll tell a lie to stay alive in a tight situation. Thomas Paine put it succinctly, “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” I guess that makes me honest!
The lunatic notion of a “post-truth” or “post-fact” society gained traction during the administration of George W. Bush, whose lackeys lied their heads off so spectacularly and for so long, with the aid of the effectively state-sponsored Fox News Network.
Philosophers are interested in any issue involving the concept of truth. The principal issue is: What is truth?
It is the problem of being clear about what you are saying when you say some claim or other is true.
Our Liar-In-Chief wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him.
The most important theories of truth are the Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory.
After studying these five theories you’ll know everything there is to know about telling the truth.
As It Stands, truth is a rare commodity among men and women, but animals are always truthful.