"The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth."

Edith Sitwell Literature See all quotes by Edith Sitwell →

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More by Edith Sitwell

“I am an unpopular electric eel in a pool of catfish.”

“People are usually made Dames for virtues I do not possess.”

“My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.”

“Let us speak of our madness. We are always being called mad. If we are mad — we and our brothers in America who are walking hand in hand with us in the vanguard of progress — at least we are mad in company with most of our great predecessors and all the most intelligent foreigners. Beethoven, Schumann, and Wagner, Shelley, Blake, Keats, Coleridge, Wordsworth were all mad in turn. We shall be proud to join them in the Asylum to which they are now consigned.”

“The trouble with most Englishwomen is that they will dress as if they had been a mouse in a previous incarnation... they do not want to attract attention.”

“Edith Sitwell: A Nearly Forgotten Poetess”

Resonant Thoughts

"Men who content themselves with the semblance of truth, and a display of words, talk much of our obligations to Great Britain for protection. Had she a single eye to our advantage? A nation of shopkee…"

— Samuel Adams

Politics1722–1803

#truth

"The force of a claim for a human right would indeed be seriously undermined if it were possible to show that it is unlikely to survive open public scrutiny. However, contrary to a commonly offered rea…"

— Amartya Sen

Economics1933

#philosophy

"Let the truth be told from young souls that become old From days spent in the jungle, where must one go To find it, time is real, we can't rewind it Out of everybody I met, who told the truth? Time di…"

— Common (rapper)

Music1972

#time

"I'm surprised she's friends with the Tories, Helen Bonham-Carter, because she's an artist and I'm not saying it's right or wrong, artists do tend, historically, to be on the left. People on the right …"

— Stewart Lee

Literature1968

#dreams