Falsification

“ These are some of the slighter factors in the case; there may be much more serious ones which lead not merely to exaggeration but to elaborate falsification and distortion of truth, and to the emphatic assertion of the most extravagant miracles, coupled usually with the assurance that there was no possibility or room for deception. ”

“ Pathological lying is falsification entirely disproportionate to any discernible end in view, engaged in by a person who, at the time of observation, cannot definitely be declared insane, feebleminded, or epileptic. ”

“ And, on the same principle, we may be sure that any habitual liar, who has long found the benefit of falsehoods at his utmost need, will have formed too profound a reverence for this powerful resource in a moment of perplexity ever to throw away a falsehood, or to squander upon a caprice of the moment that lie which, being seasonably employed, [Pg 134] might have saved him from confusion. The artist in lying is not the man to lie gratuitously. From the first, therefore, satisfied ourselves that there was a lurking motive—the key to this falsification of date—we paused to search it out. ”

“ But secret falsehood, which in the Lord's sight is the same as open falsehood,—secret falsehood, under all its various forms of misrepresentation, deception, cunning, is daily and hourly committed by how many? by how many, too, who think that they would scorn to be guilty of a direct falsehood? Look through the business world. ”

“ All political writings contain not only facts, but also reasoning and deductions drawn from those facts; and the object of the writer, must generally be illustrated by the reasoning and deductions drawn from the facts, and not from the facts themselves: and the libel if it is one, will consist generally, in what is contained in that reasoning and those deductions, and not in the facts. But evidence can be given only of the truth of facts, and no testimony can be brought to prove, the truth of opinions stated as arising out of those facts. ”

“ If I would detect a calumny, is it not requisite that I should be acquainted with its history, and know its authors and propagators? Then I may perhaps be able to confound their forgeries, to show the groundlessness of their allegations, to expose the baseness of their purposes [320] and the profligacy of their characters. I am informed of nothing; yet I am bid, first to be my own accuser, and then to answer the accusations of others. It is only by following a falsehood through all its doublings that it can be effectually destroyed. ”

“ Do men think that because a witness has been perpetually detected in falsehood, he may therefore be the more safely believed whenever he is not detected? or does adherence to a story, and frequent repetition of it, render it the more credible? On the contrary, is it not a common remark in other cases, that a liar will generally stand to and reiterate what he has once said, merely because he has said it?
Let us, if possible, divest ourselves of this superstitious veneration for everything that appears "in print," and examine a little more systematically the evidence which is adduced. ”

“ We have such an obvious transplant before us here. Both Black's Law Dictionary and Ballentine's Law Dictionary contain a definition of the term "false making." The former reads as follows: "False making. An essential element of forgery, where material alteration is not involved. Term has reference to manner in which writing is made or executed rather than to its substance or effect. A falsely made instrument is one that is fictitious, not genuine, or in some material particular something other than it purports to be and without regard to truth or falsity of facts stated therein." ”

“ GENERAL APOLOGY FOR THE PRODUCTION OF THE SHAKSPERIAN MANUSCRIPTS. I have been thus particular in every statement concerning my production of the papers, in order that it may be perfectly understood I did not act upon any premeditated plan of deception, but was as it were unwittingly led into the error; and when a man has yielded to falsehood in a single act, I believe it will invariably be found that he seeks a veil from detection in a continuation of the same impropriety. ”

“ Since fiction writing is my livelihood, I cannot and will not deny that I am an accomplished liar—indeed, almost an habitual one. Therefore, I feel some small pique when, on the one occasion on which I stick strictly to the truth, I am accused of fraud. ”

“ It puts the most extravagant strain on documents which, truly or falsely, but at any rate in the most consistent and uniform manner, assert something different. What they assert in every conceivable form, and with distinct detail, are facts; it is not criticism, but mere arbitrary license, to say that all these stand for visions. The issue of truth or falsehood is intelligible; the middle supposition of confusion and mistake in that which is the basis of everything, and is definitely and in such varied ways repeated, is trifling and incredible. ”

“ But if it can be proved that either from a deliberate desire to deceive, or from an incapacity to weigh evidence and to distinguish between fact and fiction, they have transmitted a huge mass of foolish fables as authentic history, then their testimony is worth nothing, and the story of an oral law having no other evidence must be classed amongst the other fables which have come down to us on their authority. ”

“ Lie not at all, neither in a little thing nor in a great, neither in the substance nor in the circumstance, neither in word nor deed: that is, pretend not what is false; cover not what is true; and let the measure of your affirmation or denial be the understanding of your contractor; for he who deceives the buyer or the seller by speaking what is true, in a sense not intended or understood by the other, is a liar and a thief. A Perfect Master must avoid that which deceives, equally with that which is false. ”

“ Once the false statement of fact is established, a court may find constitutional malice only if the defendant knowingly falsified or in fact entertained serious doubts as to the truth of its publication. ”

“ If you don't do it, and you publish any more of your stuff, we shall brand you as poor, mean, cowardly liars; as men publishing falsehoods knowing them to be so, and shrinking from the light of truth and investigation. ”

“ You may imagine my surprise and displeasure when I found that I had one scholar who could thus be guilty of a lie of plagiarism, in attempting a composition on the sin of lying.
"I will not at present expose the young lady, whose punishment I have not yet decided upon. As for the rest of you, the consciousness that you have been guilty of no wrong in this respect will uphold you under the common blame which the sin of one of your number has caused you to bear. This crime is as truly a sin as any other lie. ”

“ Evidences of fraud are to be found in the uniformity of language, the impurity of style, the use of words of a late origin for an earlier period, many clumsy anachronisms, the total absence of all proof of the authenticity of the early decretals, the evident effort to meet contemporary prejudice, and the fact that there is no knowledge of the existence of the forged letters until incorporated in this collection. ”

“ Despite the commentators, we must hold to it that the lie, the falsehood is objective and concrete; not lying, or falsehood as a subjective act, habit, or quality,—which would have been rather ψευδολογία (comp. μωρολογία, v. 4; and 1 Tim. iv. 2, ψευδολόγων) , or τὸ ψευδές. ”

“ The actual facts photographed themselves in a blur on the poor film of his brain, already impressed with the clear-cut picture of his imagination, until the composite result was a mental image in which fancy predominated. If a lie is the voluntary and conscious perversion of the truth, he did not lie. An untruth is a misstatement of fact due to ignorance or misconception. ”

“ To this they all agreed, and search was made; and soon they found Falsehood, whom they instantly tore to pieces, coiled up her bowels into knots, burnt her, and dispersed her ashes to the winds. But even her dust was so malignant that it was carried all over the world; and that is the reason that wherever men exist there Falsehood must be. ”

“ It deserves to become a classic example of the advocate's tendency to smuggle conclusions into his allegations of facts. It would be difficult to cram more unfairness into an equal number of words without resorting to absolute falsehood. ”

“ Whatever tends to vitiate our literary taste, our morals, our religious or political principles, may be fairly at the mercy of criticism. So, whatever tends to introduce false science, false history, indeed, falsehood in any shape, exposes itself to the censor's rod. ”

“ So, also, for opinions of parties possessing special learning or knowledge upon the subjects in respect to which their opinions are given, as of a mechanic upon the working of a machine he has seen in use, or of a lawyer upon the title of property which he has examined. Opinions upon such matters are capable of approximating to the truth, and for a false statement of them, where deception is designed, and injury has followed from reliance on them, an action may lie. ”

“ I suppose the writer of the Handbill thought that by throwing this paragraph into the form of an insinuation, and not a positive assertion, he would escape from being branded with the charge of Falsehood, but surely he cannot be ignorant of the fact, that to deceive by the insinuation of a Falsehood is as great a breach of Truth, as to deceive by an actual falsehood itself. ”

“ I say that no person is willing in his own mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the involuntary possession of that falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood.—Lib. ”

“ Among the false assumptions that are made by many of the advocates of the "lie of necessity" is the claim that in war, in medical practice, and in the legal profession, the propriety of falsehood and deceit, in certain cases, is recognized and admitted on all sides. ”

“ Of frauds under the name of mediums there has been an abundance. Of dupes under the name of Spiritualists there has been an equal abundance. And the tricks of false mediums have been so often detected as to throw a shadow of doubt over everything connected with the asserted phenomena. Yet that it is not all fraud has been abundantly proved by the testimony of the men above named and many others of equal powers of discrimination, and by the occurrence of numerous phenomena under circumstances that absolutely precluded deception, [Pg 300] either in medium or audience. ”

“ Where all the facts are out of sight a true report and a plausible error read alike, sound alike, feel alike. Except on a few subjects where our own knowledge is great, we cannot choose between true and false accounts. ”

“ We have, therefore, to discover the real meaning of attributing falsity to things, as when we speak of a false friend, false gold, false teeth, a false musical note, a false measure in poetry, etc.
First of all, then, it will be noted that each such object has its own real nature and character, its proper mental correlate, and, therefore, its ontological truth. The false friend is a true or real deceiver, or traitor, or coward, or whatever his real character may be; the false gold is true or real bronze, or alloy, or whatever it may be in reality ”

“ I will now show you, that not only can publications, containing false opinions, do no mischief, but that they actually produce benefit, and that therefore not they, but the prosecutions, which would check, and stifle them are injurious. Is it meant to be contended that error is stronger than truth; folly more powerful than reason, and irreligion than religion? ”

“ The inclination to verbal composition, already spoken of as existing in so many cases, may be utilized, and imagination be given full sway in harmless directions. It seems likely that just this deliberate practice may serve to more clearly demarcate truth from falsehood in the individual's mind. ”

“ XL. Let us now consider, that the falsehoods and deceits, with which tribunals are environed, make the investigation of truth so difficult, that in some causes it is come at late, and in others never. This is a most pernicious injury to the public, for the tediousness and difficulty of the verification, gives breathing-time for the ill intentioned, to devise and concert all sorts of wickedness. What remedy then can you apply to this evil, but that of punishing rigorously every kind of judicial deceit? ”

“ One often sees the most damaging documentary evidence, in the forms of letters or affidavits, fall absolutely flat as betrayers of falsehood, merely because of the unskillful way in which they are handled. ”

“ As they are tested by action, the truth is separated from the falsehood, and the error involved in vague or silly ideas becomes manifest. As one comes to handle microbes, they become as real as bullets or oranges and as susceptible of being manipulated. ”

“ If it has not yet curtailed the devices of fraud, and if men make dishonest use of the knowledge and the skill that they have gained in every art, even more, perhaps, than their fathers used the scantier methods of fraud which they knew, the reason seems to be explained, and I can find nothing in the fact to argue against a final ripening of moral fruits in this region of human conduct, as well as in the rest. ”

“ Whether we are reviewing the actions of ourselves or of others, what we seem to do, in the first instance, is to refer them to some class, or associate them with certain actions of a similar kind which are familiar to us, and, then, when their character has thus been determined, they excite the appropriate feeling of approbation or disapprobation, praise or censure. Thus, as soon as we have realised that a statement is a lie or an act is fraudulent, we at once experience a feeling of indignation or disgust at the person who has made the statement or committed the act. ”