The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
Meaning of the quote
The quote suggests that the truth is not always the most important thing in human relationships. It argues that being kind and even telling harmless lies can be more valuable than always telling the absolute truth. The author believes that mathematicians and philosophers may care more about pursuing the truth as an abstract idea, but for regular people, being considerate and understanding is often more useful in our day-to-day lives.
About Graham Greene
Graham Greene was an acclaimed English writer and journalist known for his serious Catholic novels and popular thrillers. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature several times and won prestigious awards for his works like The Power and the Glory and The Heart of the Matter. Greene’s stories have been widely adapted for film, and he collaborated with director Carol Reed on classics like The Fallen Idol and The Third Man.
More quotes from Graham Greene
The great advantage of being a writer is that you can spy on people. You’re there, listening to every word, but part of you is observing. Everything is useful to a writer, you see – every scrap, even the longest and most boring of luncheon parties.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
When we are not sure, we are alive.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
It is impossible to go through life without trust: that is to be imprisoned in the worst cell of all, oneself.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
A movie is not a book. If the source material is a book, you cannot be too respectful of the book. All you owe to the book is the spirit.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
God created a number of possibilities in case some of his prototypes failed – that is the meaning of evolution.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
A murderer is regarded by the conventional world as something almost monstrous, but a murderer to himself is only an ordinary man. It is only if the murderer is a good man that he can be regarded as monstrous.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
He felt the loyalty we feel to unhappiness – the sense that is where we really belong.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
No human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
They are always saying God loves us. If that’s love I’d rather have a bit of kindness.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Reality in our century is not something to be faced.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person’s habitual misery.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil – or else an absolute ignorance.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
In Switzerland they had brotherly love, five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
My two fingers on a typewriter have never connected with my brain. My hand on a pen does. A fountain pen, of course. Ball-point pens are only good for filling out forms on a plane.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
We are all of us resigned to death: it’s life we aren’t resigned to.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
A solitary laugh is often a laugh of superiority.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Unhappiness in a child accumulates because he sees no end to the dark tunnel. The thirteen weeks of a term might just as well be thirteen years.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
The world doesn’t make any heroes anymore.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
The world is not black and white. More like black and grey.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Thrillers are like life, more like life than you are.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Against the beautiful and the clever and the successful, one can wage a pitiless war, but not against the unattractive: then the millstone weighs on the breast.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Sentimentality – that’s what we call the sentiment we don’t share.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
The moment comes when a character does or says something you hadn’t thought about. At that moment he’s alive and you leave it to him.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Failure too is a form of death.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
The economy of a novelist is a little like that of a careful housewife who is unwilling to throw away anything that might perhaps serve its turn.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
I have often noticed that a bribe has that effect – it changes a relation. The man who offers a bribe gives away a little of his own importance; the bribe once accepted, he becomes the inferior, like a man who has paid for a woman.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Heresy is another word for freedom of thought.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
British writer, playwright and literary critic (1904-1991)