QUOTE OF THE DAY, 1: Still the most serious symptom of our times…

"Straightforwardness is a foolish old-fashioned habit, a custom we have
outgrown. 'We have made lies our refuge, and under falsehood have we
hid ourselves.' We repeat, this is the most serious symptom of our
times. The newspapers which have been speculating as to the disasters
which are to flow, after a thousand years, from England's future want
of coal, would do better to inquire into the far greater disasters which threaten
at our door through England's present lack of supreme reverence for truth."
- John Ruskin, from Fors clavigera: Letters to the
Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain, 1880
[Hat tip Paul Litterick]