Are you really being told the truth?

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” Joseph Goebbels

“A lie told often enough becomes the truth.” Vladimir Lenin

“There is something fascinating about science.  One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.”  Mark Twain

“Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house.”  Henri Poincaré

“To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.”  Evelyn Fox Keller

“I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.”  Bertrand Russell

“Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.”  Robert K. Merton

“The improver of natural science absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such.  For him, scepticism is the highest of duties:  blind faith the one unpardonable sin.”  Thomas Henry Huxley

“Science can only determine what is, but not what shall be, and beyond its realm, value judgements remain indispensable. Religion, on the other hand, is concerned only with evaluating human thought and actions; it is not qualified to speak of real facts and the relationships between them.”  Albert Einstein

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” Carl Sagan

“It is inexcusable for scientists to torture animals; let them make their experiments on journalists and politicians.” Henrik Ibsen

“No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.” Jacob Bronowski

“The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.” Roger Bacon

“[Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations.” Claude Bernard

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories instead of theories to suit facts.” Sherlock Holmes

“The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.” Thomas H. Huxley

“Whenever truth stands in the mind unaccompanied by the evidence upon which it depends, it cannot properly be said to be apprehended at all.” William Godwin