Deceit
TOPIC BUDDHA GO CONFUCIUS GO MENCIUS GO PLATO GO BIBLICAL GO THE NEW TESTAMENT GO GNOSTICS GO SAINT AUGUSTINE GO NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI GO RENÉ DESCARTES GO BARUCH SPINOZA GO DAVID HUME GO GEORG W. F. HEGEL GO CHARLES DARWIN GO BERTRAND RUSSELL GO MARTIN HEIDEGGER GO BERTOLT BRECHT GO GEORGE ORWELL GO GEORGE SOROS GO
Deceit
Doublethink
Trickery
Deception
Entrapment
Concealment

Fallibility
  
The Dhammapada. 
"Life is easily lived
By a shameless one,
A disparager, crafty as a crow,
An obtruder, impudent and corrupt."
[v. 244]1a

"The one who speaks lies, goes to hell . . . " [v. 306]1b

The Analects. "The Master said: 'If a man does not anticipate deception and does not reckon on bad faith, but on the other hand is aware in good time when they occur, he is a man of quality, isn't he?'" [14:31]1a

Mencius. "'What do you mean by understanding words?' asked Kung-sun Ch'ou.
"'I understand what lies hidden beneath beguiling words. I understand the trap beneath extravagant words. I understand the deceit beneath depraved words. And I understand the weariness beneath evasive words.'" [III.2]
1a*

Republic. "[W]ould God willingly mask the truth behind appearance and deceive us by his words or action? . . . [T]here's nothing of the lying poet in God. . . God is entirely uniform and truthful."1a The Dead Sea Scrolls. " . . Cursed be [S]atan in his hostile design, and damned in his guilty dominion. Cursed be all the spirits of his [lo]t in their wicked design . . . For they are a lot of darkness and their visitation is for eternal destruction. Amen, amen. . . [Cursed be a]ll those who practi[se] their [wicked designs] . . . [plotting against Go]d'[s Covenant] . . . to exchange the judgemen[ts of truth for folly.]"1

The New Testament. " . . . [T]here is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known." [St. Matthew 10:26]1a

The Nag Hammadi Library. "Do not trust anyone as a friend, for this whole world has come into being deceitfully . . . All things [of] the world are not profitable, but they happen in vain. There is no one, not even a brother, (who is trustworthy), since each one is seeking his own advantage."1a

The Essential Augustine. " . . . [I]f I am deceived, I am. For he who does not exist cannot be deceived; and if I am deceived, by this same token I am."1a

The Prince. " . . . [I]t is necessary . . . to be a great feigner and dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who allow themselves to be deceived."1a

The Discourses" . . . [A] prince who wishes to do great things must learn to practice deceit."2a

Meditations. "Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived us."1a

"I recognize that it is impossible that [God] should ever deceive me, since in all fraud and deceit is to be found a certain imperfection; and although it may seem that to be able to deceive is a mark of subtlety or power, yet the desire to deceive bears evidence without doubt of weakness or malice, and, accordingly, cannot be found in God."1b

The Ethics. "He who has a true idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, and cannot doubt its truth."1a*

"The free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good faith."1b*

Selected Essays. "Mankind are, in all ages, caught by the same baits: the same tricks played over and over again, still trepan them."1 Phenomenology of Spirit. "The masses are the victims of the deception of a priesthood which, in its envious conceit, holds itself to be the sole possessor of insight and pursues its other selfish ends as well. . . From the stupidity and confusion of the people brought about by the trickery of priestcraft, despotism, which despises both, draws for itself the advantage of undisturbed domination . . . "1a* The Descent of Man. "False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long . . . "1a Bertrand Russell on God and Religion"I am persuaded that there is absolutely no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action, come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army . . .  and I will undertake . . . to make the majority of the population believe that two and two are three . . . "1a

"How are we to know what really is God's will? If the forces of evil have a certain share of power, they may deceive us into accepting as Scripture what is really their work. This was the view of the Gnostics, who thought that the Old Testament was the work of an evil spirit."1b

Being and Time. "The 'Being-true' . . . means . . . the entities of which one is talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be seen as something unhidden; that is, they must be discovered. Similarly, 'Being false' . . . amounts to deceiving in the sense of covering up [verdecken]: putting something in front of something (in such a way as to let it be seen) and thereby passing it off as something which it is not."1* Galileo. "Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons."1

Nineteen Eighty-Four.
"TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE."1a*

"Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. . . It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating."1b*

The Crisis of Global Capitalism. "Why bother about the truth when a proposition does not need to be true to be effective? Why be honest when it is success, not honesty or virtue that gains people's respect? . . . We are ready to enter the Age of Fallibility."1a

" . . . [P]eople can get rich in financial markets and powerful in politics by propounding false theories or self-fulfilling prophesies."1b

* Italics in the original. 1 Buddha (c.563-c.483 BC). The Dhammapada. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana. John Ross Carter and Mahinda Palihawadana, 2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987.
a Chapter XVIII. Stains, v. 244, at 44.
b Chapter XXII. Hell, v. 306, at 55.
1 Confucius. The Analects. Translated with an Introduction and Notes by Raymond Dawson. Translation, Editorial material, Raymond Dawson, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. {The Analects consist of about 500 pieces organized by book and chapter; Confucius is referred to as Master Kong.]
a 14:31.
1 Mencius. Mencius. Translated with an Introduction by David Hinton. David Hinton, 1998. Washington, DC: COUNTERPOINT, member of the Perseus Books Group.
a Kung-Sun Ch'ou, Book One, III.2, 49.
1 Plato. Republic. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
a Primary Education for the Guardians (382a-382c), at 77-78.
1 Geza Vermes. The Dead Sea Scrolls. 4th ed. G. Vermes, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1975, 1987, 1995. Penguin Group. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd., at 185. (The liturgical curse identified as 4Q286-7 was published by J.T. Milik, Journal of Jewish Studies 23, 1972, 126-35.) 1 The Holy Bible. The New Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins' Clear-Type Press, 1957.
a St. Matthew 10:26.
1 James M. Robinson (ed.). The Nag Hammadi Library in English. 3rd completely revised edition. Translated and introduced by members of the Coptic Gnostic Library Project of the Institute for Antiquity and Christianity, Claremont, California. Afterword by Richard Smith. E. J. Brill, Leiden, The Netherlands, 1978, 1988. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.
a The Teachings of Silvanus (VII,4). Introduced and translated by Malcolm L. Peel and Jan Zandee, at 386. [Note: Teach. Silv. is not gnostic.]

1 Saint Augustine. The Essential Augustine. 2nd ed. Selected and with Commentary by Vernon J. Bourke. Vernon J. Bourke, 1964-1974. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company.
a If I am Deceived, I Exist, at 33. Source of the translation: City of God, XI, 26; trans. The Works of Aurelius Augustinus, ed. Marcus Dods, 15 vols, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark Co., 1871-1876. Revised by Vernon J. Bourke. 

1 Niccol� Machiavelli (1469-1527). The Prince (1531). Translated by Luigi Ricci. Revised by E.R.P. Vincent. Introduction by Christian Gauss. New York, NY: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc., 1952. (Reprint of a hardcover edition published by Oxford University Press, Inc.)
a In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith, at 93.

2 Niccol� Machiavelli. The Discourses. Edited with an Introduction by Bernard Crick using the translation of Leslie J. Walker, S.J. Revisions by Brian Richardson. Bernard Crick, 1970. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd. (Penguin Classics.)
a Book Two, Discourse 13, at 310.

1 René Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.
a First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at 96.
b Fourth Meditation: Of Truth and Error, at 132-133.
1 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The Ethics. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Selected Letters . Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited, with Introductions, by Seymour Feldman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.
a Proposition 43, Part II, at 91.
b Proposition 72, Part IV, at 194.
1 David Hume (1711-1776). Selected Essays (1741-1742). Edited with an Introduction by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, 1993. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, at 214. 1 G. W. F. Hegel (1770-1831). Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J.N. Findlay. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.
a The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition, at 330.
1 Charles Darwin (1809-1882). The Descent of Man (1871). In Darwin, Philip Appleman (ed.), 2nd ed., New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1970, 1979.
a General Summary and Conclusion, at 196.

1 Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell on God and Religion. Edited by Al Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 225.
b An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 215.

1 Martin Heidegger. Being and Time. A translation of Sein und Zeit (7th ed., Neomarius Verlag, Tübingen) by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, NY: Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1962 [HarperSanFrancisco]. (The Concept of the Logos, at 55-58.)

1 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). "Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties." Translated by Richard Winston. Originally published in the United States in Twice A Year (New York), Tenth Anniversary Issue, 1948.
a Translation reprinted in Bertolt Brecht,
Galileo. Edited and with an Introduction by Eric Bentley, 1966. English version by Charles Laughton. Arvid Englind, 1940. Bertolt Brecht, 1952 (Indiana University Press). New York, NY: Grove Press. (Appendix A, at 133-150.)
b The first version of Brecht's essay was first published in the Pariser Tagebaltt, December 12, 1934, under the title "Dichter sollen die Wahrheit schreiben" ("Poets Are to Tell the Truth"). The final version of Brecht's essay was published in Unsere Zeit (Paris), VIII, Nos. 2/3, April 1935, at 23-24.
1 George Orwell (1903-1950). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Blair, 1949. Estate of the late Sonia Brownwell Orwell, 1987. Note on the Text by Peter Davison, 1989.London, UK: Penguin Group, 1989, 1990. (First published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1949.)
a "2+2=5," at 290 and 303.
b Doublethink and the "secret of rulership," at 223-224.
1 George Soros. The Crisis of Global Capitalism [Open Society Endangered]. George Soros, 1998. New York, NY: PublicAffairs.
a The Enlightenment, at 89-90.
b Reflexivity and Social Scientists, at 34.