Jonathan Swift on truth and lies

We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.

When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.

Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats1795–1821Ode on a Grecian Urn, Stanza 5. The final lines of this poem have been rendered in various ways in different editions, some placing the entire last two lines within quotation marks, others only the statement “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” …In context

• Beauty

This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

William Shakespeare1564–1616Hamlet (1600–1), Act I, scene iii.In context

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Winston Churchill1874–1965