Truth Doesn’t Matter — a correction, in progress

Bridges stand, planes fly, and reactors hold, but only for people who refuse to lie to physics.

The First Principle Is That You Must Not Fool Yourself

Before truth is a public good, it is a private discipline, and the first audience for every lie is the person telling it.

Civics

Facts Are Stubborn Things

Science

Medicine Only Works When the Data Is True

Economy

Trust Is Invisible Infrastructure

Law

Justice Is a Truth-Finding Machine

The oath is not a formality. Courts exist because getting the facts right is the difference between justice and its opposite.

Corrections

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” — George Orwell — APOCRYPHAL.

Orwell never wrote it. It appears nowhere in his works; the earliest attribution to him is from 1982, three decades after his death. It seems to have begun as someone's summary of his outlook that hardened into a “quotation.” (Real precursors: Charlotte Despard's “truth is revolutionary,” 1912.)