Veracity Quotes

“So a key ingredient to achieving happiness is to become engaged in activities that consume our concentration, that don’t give our imaginations room to find new things to worry about. If we’re totally focused on something we enjoy, living in the moment, like every other animal in the animal kingdom, we’re alive, electric—and happy. Especially if we’re challenging ourselves, overcoming obstacles, improving, achieving.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“So the old saying now becomes, ‘the man with a thousand media outlets, each providing its own, differing spin on the news, never knows what’s true.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“We always look on the dark side, are suckers for the crisis of the day, and quickly separate into groups.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“if you allow yourself to rise above a short-term perspective and super-charged rhetoric, the big picture is still looking better than ever before.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Over the past few decades it seems like we can only move in one direction politically. Toward more polarization—more demonization—rather than less. If a resident of the White House is caught torturing babies, his own side gives him a pass. But, conversely, if a resident of the White House walks on water, the out-party scorns him for not knowing how to swim.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Much worse. Because it provides a bubble, an echo chamber. And it provides distance and anonymity, so people can be as vicious as they want, and never have to look their opponent in the eye. They never see them as loving parents or thoughtful neighbors, just as unseen members of a nebulous other.” Elias frowned deeply. “I don’t attack people on social media,” he added, “but I’m not immune from tribalism and confirmation bias either. No one is. But when I’m really riled up about a political point, I remind myself that at least some of the people on the other side are kind and well-meaning people—even if, in my opinion, they’re woefully misguided. And at least some of the people on my side are total assholes. Men and women who agree with me on the issue, but who beat their wives, or bilk charities, or engage in other despicable behaviors. My side isn’t filled only with the virtuous, and theirs only with the corrupt and immoral.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“another problem is that many of us are addicted to news itself. And this is a drug that can eat away at rationality and happiness both. No matter how much the news alarms someone with this addiction, or depresses them, or makes them absolutely miserable with the unfairness of the world, or puts them in a state of perpetual rage, they can’t help but seek out even more news. And this news stokes even more outrage, and exposes them to even more dire warnings of coming catastrophes.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“I watched as social media made us more connected than ever—but also more tribal than ever—and saw political parties continue to go at each other’s throats like never before. I watched as the anger and hysteria grew, stoked by politicians looking to push their followers to the polls.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“First, and perhaps most importantly, despair and pessimism are in our very natures. We’re wired to seek out bad news over good, and to always fear the worst. So bad news seizes our attention, while good news is often ignored.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“We used to spend quality time with a few people. Actually with them—physically. For hours on end. Now we spend time interacting with hundreds of people, but on our phones, or sitting in a chair all alone facing a computer screen.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“The idea of proposing marriage with a diamond ring seems like a tradition so old, and so steeped in our culture, you’d think it was one of the Ten Commandments delivered to Moses on Mt. Sinai. But it’s a recent, man-made creation. De Beers brilliantly fostered this shared mythology, taking a relatively abundant, relatively inexpensive item that wasn’t selling, and convincing the public over decades that a diamond engagement ring was an indispensable”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Shared belief in an absurdity is a much better indicator of loyalty than shared belief in the truth. And it’s a much better way to create group cohesion. If a leader asks you to believe that the sky is blue, and you do, what does that prove? The truth is easy. But if he requires his followers to believe the sky is green, they quickly distance themselves from non-believers and become firmly united in a shared delusion.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Satan is also known as the accuser, the slanderer, and the deceiver.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“POLITICS (noun):  Poly, meaning “many” plus Tics, meaning “blood-sucking parasites.” —Larry Hardiman”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“All are well written, and extremely eye-opening. They are:  The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves, by Matt Ridley Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About the World—and Why Things Are Better Than You Think, by Hans Rosling. The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker Enlightenment: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, also by Steven Pinker Abundance: The Future is Better Than you Think, by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler Of the five, if you could only choose one, I would choose Factfulness, and if you could only choose two, Factfulness and The Rational Optimist. In terms of sheer amount of data, Enlightenment and Factfulness both have endless graphs showing improvements on endless dimensions, with Factfulness being a much easier read for the lay person. These were two new books I read just for this novel, so were not mentioned in Seeker.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“The Rational Optimist, Factfulness, Enlightenment Now, or Abundance.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“We often want to be misled. We collude with the lie, unwittingly, because we have a stake in not knowing the truth. It may not be in the interest of a mother with a number of very young children to catch her mate’s lies that conceal his infidelity. Everyone but she may know what is happening. Or, the parents of a preadolescent using hard drugs may unwittingly strive to avoid spotting the lies that would force them to deal with a possible failure as parents, and which would bring about a terrible struggle. The targets of lies may also collusively want to believe the liar to avoid recognition of impending disaster. Which explains why the businessman who mistakenly hired an embezzler continues to miss the signs of the embezzlement. Rationally speaking, the sooner he discovers the embezzlement the better, but psychologically, this discovery will mean he must face not only his company’s losses but his own mistake in having hired such a rascal.” —Paul Ekman, Telling Lies”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“George Washington and the Cherry Tree—Jay Richardson, James Mason University “The cherry tree myth is the most well-known and longest enduring legend about George Washington. In the original story, when Washington was six, he received a hatchet as a gift and damaged his father’s cherry tree. When his father confronted him, George said, ‘I cannot tell a lie,’ and admitted to what he had done. Washington’s father embraced him and rejoiced that his son’s honesty was worth more than a thousand trees. “Ironically, this iconic story about the value of truth and honesty isn’t true or honest. It was invented by one of Washington’s first biographers, Mason Locke Weems. After Washington’s death in 1799, Weems explained to a publisher, ‘Millions are excited to read something about him. My plan is to give his history, sufficiently minute, and then go on to show that his unparalleled rise and elevation were due to his great virtues.’ “Weems’ biography, The Life of Washington, was first published in 1800 and was an instant bestseller. However, the cherry tree myth did not appear until the book’s fifth edition was published in 1806.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“The great English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead had written, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous. The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“A seventeenth-century English politician once famously said, ‘a diplomat is an honest man sent abroad to lie for the good of his country.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“POLITICS (noun):  Poly, meaning “many” plus Tics, meaning “blood-sucking parasites.” —Larry Hardiman “I believe that any politician who comes to power, in part, through his skill in debate and public speeches, who is agile in handling questions at news conferences, with a glistening TV or radio image, has the conversational talents to be a natural liar.” —Paul Ekman, Telling Lies”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Anyone with a negative story to tell about her could get an instant nationwide audience.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“And social media makes this worse, doesn’t it?” said Paige. “Much worse. Because it provides a bubble, an echo chamber. And it provides distance and anonymity, so people can be as vicious as they want, and never have to look their opponent in the eye. They never see them as loving parents or thoughtful neighbors, just as unseen members of a nebulous other.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Confirmation bias. This is our tendency to seek out information that supports and reinforces our beliefs, and ignore or discount any information that is contrary to them. So we stick to our guns, even against overwhelming evidence that we’re wrong.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“People have an innate tendency to almost instantly form discrete groups. And almost instantly become biased against anyone in a different group.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Because the people who deliver the news know that the more overblown and dramatic the headline, the more alarming or contentious, the more clicks and eyeballs it will attract. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression, ‘if it bleeds—it leads.’ The news now provides a nonstop barrage of fear, despair, and distrust of other groups. And while these headlines are all irresistible to our primitive psyches, they steadily eat away at our souls, promoting divisiveness and pessimism.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“In 1968,” he continued, “Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich echoed Malthus in many ways in a wildly influential book entitled The Population Bomb, again predicting an inevitable disaster that never came. He later declared with conviction that four billion people worldwide, and sixty-five million Americans, would die of starvation by the year 1990. “In the seventies, many scientists became convinced that the globe was cooling, and raised alarms that a new ice age was just around the corner.” Elias shook his head. “I could provide endless examples of other coming disasters and doomsday scenarios that evoked widespread anxiety, but that were grossly exaggerated. Acid rain and low sperm counts. Y2K, AIDS, Ebola, mad-cow disease, and killer bees. The bird flu and the reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles. Severe shortages of everything under the sun, from oil, to food, to zinc. Black holes created by the Large Hadron Collider, and unstoppable genetically engineered organisms breaking free of the lab. Famine, nuclear war, and asteroid collisions. Oh, yeah, and predictions of the near extinction of all species on Earth, which was supposed to have already occurred. And on and on and on. Esteemed scientists or government experts convinced us to fear all of these coming catastrophes. Most never happened at all. Those that did wreaked only a tiny fraction of the havoc that we were assured was coming.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“First, people are born to worry. That’s how we made it to the top of the food chain. Constant anxiety is the curse that comes with consciousness, with sentience. We’re the only species smart enough to fear not only actual, present threats, but also a myriad of imagined threats. Worse, we’re the only species burdened with the knowledge of our own mortality. And this makes us the most neurotic animal on Earth.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“By just about every measure, America is better, and the world is better, than it was fifty years ago, thirty years ago, or even ten years ago.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity

“Alfred North Whitehead had written, “It is the business of the future to be dangerous. The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.”
― Douglas E. Richards, Veracity