Tuesday 28 September 2010

QUOTE OF THE DAY: On honesty

Misrepresenting facts does not change them. However successfully one might fool another person, faking is ultimately futile. For it does not alter the underlying facts.
   --Tara Smith, quoted in “Six Clarifying Quotes on Honesty

Something to think about for all sides there, from those who (still wholly unrepentant) were misrepresenting Anderton’s “seismic shift” non-comment the day before the earthquake as something it wasn’t, to those promoting Labour pamphlets intimating Labour will cut all GST, not just on fruit and vegetables.

Lying doesn’t change the underlying facts; it suggests that if you have to make something up you no valid criticism of the real facts; and it suggests too that you yourself shouldn’t be taken seriously in the future.

So, bad all round, really.

Honesty is the first casualty of war—and the almost daily casualty of politics.

No wonder politicians aren’t taken seriously.

1 comment:

matt said...

No wonder politicians aren’t taken seriously.

They may not be taken seriously, but they still take a tonne of our money and we still get put in jail if we don't comply with their demands. So even if not credible, they are real.