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When the public interest is involved, finding out what actually happened is important; justice is an essential part of the social contract, and you can’t have justice until you know the truth.

— Ted Chiang Exhalation: Stories (2019)

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More quotes by Ted Chiang

Let me always be inquisitive, but never be suspicious.

Exhalation: Stories (2019)

The universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one causal and the other teleological.

Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

God is not just, God is not kind, God is not merciful, and understanding that is essential to true devotion.

Stories of Your Life and Others (2002)

Four things do not come back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Exhalation: Stories (2019)

But the church as an institution has always been able to derive strength from the evidence when it’s useful and ignore it when it’s not.

Exhalation: Stories (2019)

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You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion.

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False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

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I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil.

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Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.

Ulysses S. Grant Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Ted Chiang (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.