Speaking Truth To Power Quotes

Not many people were speaking truth to power in the '80s. I had a really good time doing it - I found it gratifying. It was a joy to have an opportunity to say what you believed. It's challenging to do it in fiction, but I liked writing the novels. I liked writing 'Democracy' particularly. ~ Joan Didion

Claiming to be silenced amplifies and circulates reactionary forms of speech by generating outrage. And this manoeuvre works not because reactionary feminists are speaking truth to power and being accused of transphobia, but because they are speaking for power by expressing transphobia. ~ Alison Phipps

I think there's a real hunger for people speaking truth to power. Like, there's a little minority now that's saying you sounded like an asshole and a whiner. But that's just the player-hating fringe. I wouldn't worry about it. ~ Jonathan Franzen

Being a prophet in the wilderness speaking truth to power typically leads to poverty and punishment. It is far easier to follow the lucrative trade winds of popular opinion but withheld honesty results in forgotten words. ~ Stewart Stafford

At first glance, a militant conception of revolution seems more impractical than a nonviolent conception, but this is because it is realistic. People need to understand that capitalism, the state, white supremacy, imperialism, and patriarchy all constitute a war against the people of this planet. And revolution is an intensification of that war. We cannot liberate ourselves and create the worlds we want to live in if we think of fundamental social change as shining a light in the darkness, winning hearts and minds, speaking truth to power, bearing witness, capturing people's attention, or any other passive parade. Millions of people die every year on this planet for no better reason than a lack of clean drinking water. Because the governments and corporations that have usurped control of the commons have not found a way to profit from those people's lives, they let them die. Millions of people die every year because a few corporations and their allied governments do not want to allow the production of generic AIDS drugs and other medicine. Do you think the institutions and the elite individuals who hold the power of life or death over millions give a fuck about our protests? They have declared war on us, and we need to take it back to them. Not because we are angry (though we should be), not to get revenge, and not because we are acting impulsively, but because we have weighed the possibility of freedom against the certainty of shame from living under whatever form of dominat ~ Peter Gelderloos

Greed, crowned emperor,
rules the earth with cold disdain
for harmony's path. ~ Aberjhani

The paradox of identity liberalism is that it paralyzes the capacity to think and act in a way that would actually accomplish the things it professes to want. It is mesmerized by symbols: achieving superficial diversity in organizations, retelling history to focus on marginal and often minuscule groups, concocting inoffensive euphemisms to describe social reality, protecting young ears and eyes already accustomed to slasher films from any disturbing encounter with alternative viewpoints. Identity liberalism has ceased being a political project and has morphed into an evangelical one. The difference is this: evangelism is about speaking truth to power. Politics is about seizing power to defend the truth…

If liberals hope ever to recapture America's imagination and become a dominant force across the country, it will not be enough to beat the Republicans at flattering the vanity of the mythical Joe Sixpack. They must offer a vision of our common destiny based on one thing that all Americans, of every background, actually share. And that is citizenship. We must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals - including ones to benefit particular groups - in terms of principles that everyone can affirm. Ours must become a civic liberalism. ~ Mark Lilla

I did not even know who Christ was, that He was God. I had not the faintest idea that there existed such a thing as the Blessed Sacrament. I thought churches were simply places where people got together and sang a few hymns. And yet now I tell you, you who are now what I once was, unbelievers, it is that Sacrament, and that alone, the Christ living in our midst, and sacrificed by us, and for us and with us, in the clean and perpetual Sacrifice, it is He alone Who holds our world together, and keeps us all from being poured headlong and immediately into the pit of our eternal destruction. And I tell you there is a power that goes forth from that Sacrament, a power of light and truth, even into the hearts of those who have heard nothing of Him and seem to be incapable of belief. ~ Thomas Merton

The fascist dictator declares that the masses of people are biologically inferior and crave authority, that basically, they are slaves by nature. Hence, a totalitarian authoritarian regime is the only possible form of government for such people. It is significant that all dictators who today plunge the world into misery stem from the suppressed masses of people. They are intimately familiar with this sickness on the part of masses of people. What they lack is an insight into natural processes and development, the will to truth and research, so that they are never moved by a desire to want to change these facts.

On the other hand, the formal democratic leaders made the mistake of assuming that the masses of people were automatically capable of freedom and thereby precluded every possibility of establishing freedom and self-responsibility in masses of people as long as they were in power. They were engulfed in the catastrophe and will never reappear.

Our answer is scientific and rational. It is based on the fact that masses of people are indeed incapable of freedom, but it does not - as racial mysticism does - look upon this incapacity as absolute, innate, and eternal. It regards this incapacity as the result of former social conditions of life and, therefore, as changeable. ~ Wilhelm Reich

This is not to say that power and security are the sole or even the most important objectives of mankind; as a species we prize beauty, truth, and goodness. . . . What the realist seeks to stress is that all these more noble goals will be lost unless one makes provision for one's security in the power struggle among social groups. . . . A moral commitment lies at the heart of realism. . . . What Morgenthau and many other realists have in common is a belief that ethical and political behavior will fail unless it takes into account the actual practice of states and the teachings of sound theory. ~ Robert Gilpin

The sea - this truth must be confessed - has no generosity. No display of manly qualities - courage, hardihood, endurance, faithfulness - has ever been known to touch its irresponsible consciousness of power. ~ Joseph Conrad

This is the gift of your species and this is the danger, because you do not choose to control your imaginings. You imagine wonderful things and you imagine terrible things, and you take no responsibility for the choice. You say you have inside you both the power of good and the power of evil, the angel and the devil, but in truth you have just one thing inside you - the ability to imagine. ~ Michael Crichton

Some things transcend politics and policy and the lust for power. Truth, honesty, integrity, decency and fairness are immutable values. They are the ethical substance of life. They ought to be cherished. To sell them out is to sell one's soul. ~ Michael Short

If we look at history - those of us who study it, who can remember it - we understand the reason why those who come to power swiftly, amid extreme national crises, are so dangerous: during such crises, we all turn into children aching for a good father. And the truth is, in our fear and despair, we'll take any father. Even if his furor is dangerous. It's as if humans can't understand how to function without a father. Perhaps especially then, we mistake heroic agency for its dark other. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

In 1517, few western Christians worried that Muslims might have a more convincing message to offer than Christianity or that Christian youth might start converting to Islam. The Turks were at the gate, it's true, but they weren't in the living room, and they certainly weren't in the bedroom. The Turks posed a threat to the physical health of Christians, but not to the spiritual health of Christianity.

Muslims were in a different boat. Almost from the start, as I've discussed, Islam had offered its political and military successes as an argument for its doctrines and a proof of its revelations. The process began with those iconic early battles at Badr and Uhud, when the outcome of battle was shown to have theological meaning. The miracle of expansion and the linkage of victory with truth continued for hundreds of years.

Then came the Mongol holocaust, which forced Muslim theologians to reexamine their assumptions. That process spawned such reforms as Ibn Taymiyah. Vis-a-vis the Mongols, however, the weakness of Muslims was concrete and easy to understand. The Mongols had greater killing power, but they came without an ideology. When the bloodshed wound down and the human hunger for meaning bubbled up, as it always does, they had nothing to offer. In fact, they themselves converted. Islam won in the end, absorbing the Mongols as it has absorbed the Turks before them and the Persians before that.
...
The same could not be said of the new overlor ~ Tamim Ansary

Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. It is because science gives us the power of manipulating nature that it has more social importance than art. Science as the pursuit of truth is the equal, but not the superior, of art. Science as a technique, though it may have little intrinsic value, has a practical importance to which art cannot aspire. ~ Bertrand Russell

Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The farther you get from the actual historical person of Jesus and His time, the more the church knows about Jesus and understand more deeply the truth of the Scriptures. We know more of the truth of Jesus the Risen Lord and His Word because we have been the recipients of more than 2000 years of faith, of life lived in the power of the Spirit and the Word in our midst. The power of of the presence of the Risen Lord is not static, but dynamic, and growing ever stronger as the kingdom of the earth comes more into its fullness in time and place. It is an awesome thought that calls us to responsibility and gratefulness for having been given the gift from those who have gone before us in faith. It is our privilege and inheritance, which we must be sure to pass on to those who come after us, in forms that are ever richer, more expressive and inclusive of others. ~ Megan McKenna

The more you fear losing your power the more rules you will make.
Goverments suffer paranoia, they don't want you to know the real truth ~ Kimberly Loskov

People will hate you for speaking the truth, but you've gotta learn to stand up to them, so don't be offended if I say something you don't like. ~ Eminem

When wisdom arises, our inherent power as a being naturally arises as well, and then we begin to view things differently. We begin to see things based on the truth that we have found inside, not the truth that is
imposed by others on us. ~ M. Laurie Cantil

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth. ~ Adolf Hitler

It's all about truth," he said. "We don't trust governments because they don't tell us the truth. They make every story sound like it's good news, even when it's not. Those who are in power sing their own praises. Those who aren't in power criticise those that are. And no-one tells the whole truth. That's why we look for conspiracies. We know we are being lied to. We just don't know what they are lying to us about. ~ Will Once

Putting thoughts into words is vastly different from putting truth into words. For words are not truth. As ardently as writers sort and select and polish their words, at the end of the day they are still words. They are not, in themselves, truth. However carefully we choose our words, no matter how eloquently we compile and conjoin and convey them, they remain just words, merely signposts that point to the truth, as Eckhart Tolle put it. Just as preachers, politicians, PR spin masters and the media can't create truth by writing or speaking words they say are true, authors can't validate truth by putting it into print. And the rest of us can't know it by simply hearing or reading the words. We can only find our way to truth by following the signposts and ultimately believing. It all comes down to believing, to faith, for there is no proof this side of the big dirt nap. ~ Lionel Fisher

When everyone feels free to tell you the truth, respect for you dwindles ... A wise prince should take another course: choose wise men for your advisors, and allow only them the liberty of speaking the truth to the prince, and only on matters about which you ask, and nothing else. But you should question them about everything, listen patiently to their opinions, then form your own conclusions later. ~ Niccolo Machiavelli

To me art means power to sway people not with my words but with a mere picture. Art means expression, not my own but of the subjects. Art means truth; because when you see a picture you see all that is real. Art is exposure, showing things in a way they haven't been seen before. ~ CV

In answer to modern requests for signs and wonders, Our Lord might say, 'You repeat Satan's temptation, whenever you admire the wonders of science, and forget that I am the Author of the Universe and its science. Your scientists are the proofreaders, but not the authors of the Book of Nature; they can see and examine My handiwork, but they cannot create one atom themselves. You would tempt Me to prove Myself omnipotent by meaningless tests...You tempt Me after you have willfully destroyed your own cities with bombs by shrieking out, "Why does God not stop this war?" You tempt Me, saying that I have no power, unless I show it at your beck and call. This, if you remember, is exactly how Satan tempted Me in the desert.

I have never had many followers on the lofty heights of Divine truth, I know; for instance, I have hardly had the intelligentsia. I refuse to perform stunts to win them, for they would not really be won that way. It is only when I am seen on the Cross that I really draw men to Myself; it is by sacrifice, and not by marvels, that I must make My appeal. I must win followers not with test tubes, but with My blood; not with material power, but with love; not with celestial fireworks, but with the right use of reason and free will. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Othalas: Words. What are they but shadows on a page or howling on the wind? They are as ever-changing as the mists below us and it is just as easy to lose sense of yourself among them. I am older than most sorcerers so what I know may, indeed, be close to the truth. Magic, wyrd, words, dreams, they all come from the spirit. Within them lie both power and peril. For to misuse any is to warp your sense of self. To lie in words, or in magic, or in dreams
that is how you become lost. The lights you see, they were lost long before they came to the Vale. ~ Robert Fanney

A man's power to connect his thought with its proper symbol, and so to utter it, depends on the simplicity of his character, that is, upon his love of truth, and his desire to communicate it without loss. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The calamities that are constantly being reported - battles, massacres, famines, revolutions - tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. ~ George Orwell

I believe that the truth is the only force that will set us free. I have hope, not in the tangible or in what I can personally accomplish, but in the faith that battling evil, cruelty, and injustice allows us to retain our identity, a sense of meaning and ultimately our freedom. Perhaps in our lifetimes we will not succeed. Perhaps things will only get worse. But this does not invalidate our efforts. Rebellion - which is different from revolution because it is perpetual alienation from power rather than the replacement of one power system with another - should be our natural state. And faith, ... ~ Chris Hedges

Exactly who bears responsibility for the spate of extrajudicial killings is unclear. Senior police officials privately accuse the military's intelligence services of committing the worst abuses, and complain that their men bear the brunt of Taliban reprisals. One retired officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, offered a still-murkier explanation: that in some cases, intelligence operatives tortured suspected militants, then handed them to allied police officers for execution. Whatever the truth, ~ Anonymous

This may sound corny, but sometimes, truth and justice do prevail. When I met you, I marveled at your faith, your capacity to believe. Believe in this, Jennifer. Believe I am going to win this case because I am. Believe the boys will get through this. They will be happy and strong someday soon. Believe, Jen! Believe! ~ Mark M. Bello

Almost as remarkable as the hoax itself, and indicative of the enormous cultural power of its perpetrators, is the fact that the revelation of Rigoberta's mendacity has changed almost nothing. The Nobel committee has already refused to take back her prize, many of the thousands of college courses that make her book a required text for American college students will continue to do so, and the editorial writers of the major press institutions have already defended her falsehoods on the same grounds that supporters of Tawana Brawley's parallel hoax made famous: even if she's lying, she's telling the truth. ~ David Horowitz

Do not make passion an argument for truth! - O you good-natured and even noble enthusiasts, I know you! You want to win your argument against us, but also against yourself, and above all against yourself!and a subtle and tender bad conscience so often incites you against your enthusiasm! How ingenious you then become in the outwitting and deadening of this conscience! How you hate the honest, the simple, the pure, how you avoid their innocent eyes! That knowing better whose representatives they are and whose voice you hear all too loudly within you, how it casts doubt on your belief- how you seek to make it suspect as a bad habit, as a sickness of the age, as neglect and infection of your own spiritual health! You drive yourself to the point of hating criticism, science, reason! You have to falsify history so that it may bear witness for you, you have to deny virtues so that they shall not cast into the shade those of your idols and ideals! Coloured pictures where what is needed is rational grounds! Ardour and power of expression! Silvery mists! Ambrosial nights! You understand how to illuminate and how to obscure, and how to obscure with light! And truly, when your passion rises to the point of frenzy, there comes a moment when you say to yourself: now I have conquered the good conscience, now I am light of heart, courageous, self-denying, magnificent, now I am honest! How you thirst for those moments when your passion bestows on you perfect self-justification and as it were ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The priesthood of Christ is "not according to the law of a fleshy commandment, but according to the power of an indestructible life" (Heb. 7:16). Aaron was constituted high priest according to the powerless letter of the law, but Christ according to the powerful element of an indestructible life. Our High Priest is constituted of a life which nothing can conquer, but which rather conquers everything! It is a life which cannot be destroyed. A life which saves to the uttermost. The endless, eternal, divine, uncreated life. The resurrection life which has passed the test of death and Hades. ~ Witness Lee

More effectively than any of the other tales, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' established Andersen's reputation as a man who created stories for children - not just in the sense of target audience, but also as beneficiaries of something extraordinary. The lesson embedded in it is so transparent that its title circulates in the form of proverbial wisdom about social hypocrisy. But more importantly, 'The Emperor's New Clothes' romanticizes children by investing them with the courage to challenge authority and to speak truth to power. ~ Maria Tatar

Theoretically, let's stipulate, for argument's sake, that there are a lot of powerful people at a university like this who believe things that aren't, strictly speaking, true."

Leftists, you mean."

Let's just call them people. Powerful people."

All right."

These powerful people believe things like: One culture is as good as another. Or, there's no such thing as good and evil. Therefore, if America is at odds or at war with someone, it must be America's fault. You only have to think about those statements for two minutes to see that they can't possibly be true. But these people think they should be true and they think they'll seem to be true if no one is allowed to say they're not true. So they attack anyone who says that they're not true. They call him names. Racist, sexist, phobic, offensive, whatever. They demand apologies from him. They make his life a misery, so no one wants to speak up."

So it's like the emperor's new clothes."

Right. Except instead of clothes, it's all the emperor's lies. And in an Empire of Lies, only a crazy man would speak the truth. ~ Andrew Klavan