Reality Crowd

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
- “Politics and the English Language”, 1946

Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
- “Politics and the English Language”, 1946

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
- George Orwell

In religion and politics, people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second hand, and without examination.

Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

- Mark Twain

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

~How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

“So we and our elaborately evolving computers may meet each other halfway. Someday a human being, named perhaps Fred White, may shoot a robot named Pete Something-or-other, which has come out of a General Electric factory, and to his surprise see it weep and bleed. And the dying robot may shoot back and, to its surprise, see a wisp of gray smoke arise from the electric pump that it supposed was Mr. White’s beating heart. It would be rather a great moment of truth for both of them.”

~ The Shifting Realities of Phillip K. Dick