On Truth Quotes

“We can very easily see how parents in other cultures simply repeat cultural norms to their children as if those cultural norms were objective truth. Japanese parents teach their children obedience and filial piety; Catholic parents teach their children to drink the blood of their god; Muslim parents teach their children that a man who married a six-year-old girl – and consummated that marriage when she was nine – is the paragon of moral virtue; Western parents teach their children that democracy is the highest ideal; North Korean parents teach their children that the dictator who rules their lives is a sort of secular deity who loves them. The list goes on and on. Virtually every parent in the world believes that she is teaching her child the truth, when she is merely inflicting what may be politely called cultural mythologies on her child. We lie to our children, all the while telling them that lying is wrong. We command our children to think for themselves, all the while repeating the most prejudicial absurdities as if they were objective facts. We tell our children to be good, but we have no idea what goodness really is. We tell our children that conformity is wrong (“If everyone jumped off the Empire State building, would you jump too?”) but at the same time we are complete slaves to the historical inertia of prior prejudices.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

“The essence of wisdom is learning the value of “staying in the conversation,” even when it makes you uncomfortable. Especially when it makes you uncomfortable.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

“You are born into this world without choice, into a familial, social, educational, political and geographical environment that is merely accidental. And for the rest of your life, everyone will try to convince you that you are responsible for this accident.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

“If you cannot escape your prison, then you might as well imagine that you’re free.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

“Virtue is a complicated subject, but I am sure we can agree that virtue must involve some basics that are commonly understood, such as courage, integrity, benevolence, empathy, wisdom and so on. If this is the case, it cannot be possible to love people that we know very little about. If love requires virtue, then we cannot love perfect strangers, because we know nothing about their virtues. Love depends both on another person’s virtue, and our knowledge of it – and it grows in proportion to that virtue and knowledge, if we are virtuous ourselves.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion

“We command our children to think for themselves, all the while repeating the most prejudicial absurdities as if they were objective facts.”
― Stefan Molyneux, On Truth: The Tyranny of Illusion