STREET DOGS

There is one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him! If he says yes you know he’s crooked. – Groucho Marx.

Those with firm commitment to honest living rarely put their conviction in words. Those who put on a show of honesty often prove to be the worst hypocrites. Who gives more lip service to “honour” and “virtue” than the charlatan setting up his mark for the take? Because people bent towards deception misuse the symbols of honesty, we quickly learn that when slick speakers talk about “truth” we best prepare for a trip through fantasy land. As Augustine said to the Manicheans, “They cry ‘Truth’, ‘Truth’, ‘Truth’, and tell ‘lies’, ‘lies’, ‘lies’.”

To further complicate the situation, people who deliberately deceive often feel innocent. If a person intellectually believes that “truth” mutates to suit the times or is a meaningless abstraction, it follows that he or she will not acknowledge a serious difference between lies and truths.

Some will argue that since they can’t visualise “truth” and it has no weight, therefore truth is not real. Why, they ask, make a fuss over something that doesn’t materially exist?

Whatever the reason, in the end, people with low regard for truth usually hold little respect for honesty. — Virginia Delaney

According to Hugh Thomas, author of A History of the World, the greatest medical advance in history has been garbage collection.

The greatest psychological advance in history is just around the corner and will also have to do with cleaning up.

Cleaning up lies and “coming out of the closet” is getting more attention these days. [Hopefully] some day we will look back on these years of suffocation in bulls**t in the same way we look back on all the years people lived in, and died from, their garbage. — Brad Blanton