30 Quotes About Bullshit

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These "anti-realist" doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead to be true to himself. But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate, and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions, while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial -- notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit. Harry G. Frankfurt

Apparently people don't like the truth, but I do like it; I like it because it upsets a lot of people. If you show them enough times that their arguments are bullshit, then maybe just once, one of them will say, 'Oh! Wait a minute - I was wrong.' I live for that happening. Rare, I assure you Lemmy Kilmister

In plain English, you need to wrestle the doubts and accusations that it’s all just bullshit. And, needless to say, the majority of the work of the triple- H population is undeniably so. The reason that it’s so valuable to society is just that some of it isn’t bullshit and even a small percentage of genuine innovations of software, culture or lifestyle can have a huge impact. Still, you never quite know if you are the bullshitter or the hero, or if you are being sold utter bullshit. . Hanzi Freinacht

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. . Harry G. Frankfurt

Truthfully, there're only a handful of people in this world who really get joy from seeing you happy. Most won't care if you’re happy, only if you're miserable like they are. They eat that shit up. Crystal Woods

Getting old means getting lucky sometimes means sometimes you learn & along with other sweeter acquisitions you learn that ninetenths of what goes down is bullshit that there's just no way to be with people & not smear yr tongue with bullshit lies that it doesn't help to fuck with people & anyway once you know how it's no fun any more John Thomas Idlet

If you live long enough & have changed enough diapers like I have raising 6 whole grown adult children one-at-a-time; you ought to be able to call out bullshit blindly, in about a million different ways & plays. My potty-training days have long been over..so what fool retards at their wisdom stage? For this chief reason, I could show you better than tell you, try as you might: you cannot change grown ups diapers in life, who think you don't know how 'full of shit' they are today. Tracey Bond

It was the job of people like me to make up reasons, to spin a plausible yarn. And it’s amazing what people will believe. Heavy selling out of the Middle East was an old standby. Since no one ever had any clue what the Arabs were doing with their money or why, no story involving Arabs could ever be refuted. So if you didn’t know why the dollar was falling, you shouted out something about Arabs. Unknown

When a honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose. Harry Frankfurt

Don’t condemn me to the prison of your bullshit. Steve Maraboli

Dallas, is it remotely possible for you to carry on a conversation that's not loaded down with manure? Susan Elizabeth Phillips

That will teach a bitch for buying the same dam shoes as mine and for opening a shop on my block... Charli Kim Morris

You people don't know what the truth is! It's there, just under the bullshit, but you never look! That's what I hate most about this fucking city-- Lies are news and truth is obsolete! Warren Ellis

Shit spews from your lips as from the ass of a pig. Brom

Contemplation in life is more important than bullshit. So enjoy Silence. Eyden I.

It's not in the interests of the self-serving government to educate the masses to the point where they are smart enough to see through the bullshit - because then people will be too smart to vote for them again. Christina Engela

The Church says that the Earth is flat, but I know that it is round. For I have seen the shadow of the earth on the moon and I have more faith in the Shadow than in the Church. Magellan

I suppose she only wanted what she couldn't have. Well, people were that way. To hell with people. The Catholic Church had an awfully good way of handling all that. Good advice, anyways. Not to think about it. Oh, it was swell advice. Try and take it sometime. Try and take it. Ernest Hemingway

Some irony. The girl who couldn't face her own bullshit .. . suddenly forcing everyone else to. Rick Remender

Life is full of bullshit; reject or deal with it, but move on. Sue Fitzmaurice

Let the bullshitters have their bullshit. You and me, we have lives to live. And once you open your mouth to respond to their bullshit--well, that's when you're knee-deep in it. Daniel Clausen

Bullshit french post-war rationalizing Woody Allen

The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain innerstrain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated craftsmen who - with the help of advanced and demanding techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of psychological testing, and so forth - dedicate themselves tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly right. . Harry G. Frankfurt

Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. Harry G. Frankfurt

When the sky’s falling, I take shelter under bullshit. Scott Lynch