All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 29, 2024 - Dennis Prager Show
06:36
How Do We Know What Is Truth?
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Okay, let's see.
Here it is.
Pessimists are usually right, and optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
Okay?
So that was a quote I used in my Bible commentary.
Everywhere I looked.
So here, a quote by Thomas L. Friedman in Goodreads.
That's a very, very big site about books that are recommended to you.
That's in Goodreads.
Let's see.
A to Z quotes.
Thomas Friedman quotes.
Pessimists are usually right, but optimists.
And optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
So Goodreads, and A to Z quotes, and McKinsey and Company, and let's see, who else has it?
LinkedIn.
Reddit.
Everybody.
So I have said to you, and it sounds bizarre, and I don't really care because it's true, I have what can be described as almost an erotic attraction to truth.
Truth is everything.
So I was simply...
I'm interested because if I'm putting this quote into my Bible commentary, then I need to give it the proper attribution.
I'm a very big stickler on that.
I am the opposite of Claudine Gay.
I am fanatical about not plagiarizing, for moral reasons, not even legal reasons.
So I have to find out the source of the quote.
So fine, if Thomas Friedman, whom I don't particularly care for, is the source, so what?
It's a good quote.
I'll use it.
I can't use it without attributing it to the author of the quote.
So I simply did a search on the New York Times archives, which you would think Goodreads and LinkedIn And all these others would do if they're giving quotes, right?
Like, where did he say it?
Well, I found it.
And you know what he said?
As someone much smarter than I once said, and then he gives the quote.
It is not from Thomas Friedman.
Thomas Friedman never claimed it was from Thomas Friedman.
Thomas Friedman himself said it was from somebody else.
We don't know who it was from.
This is a very disturbing thing.
Thank you.
Very, very disturbing.
That a quotation site does not look up the source of the quotation.
What the hell are they there for?
It's the one thing they do and they don't do it well.
Someone dear to me and my wife and I, we had a very interesting and I guess sad discussion with her over the weekend.
A truly good soul.
And she said, I simply don't know what to believe.
And Americans didn't say that 50 years ago.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Historians had a commitment to truth.
Anthropologists did.
Sociologists did.
There was a commitment to truth.
It doesn't mean every American told the truth.
For those of you who went to college and don't understand the purpose of a generalization, I just needed to add that.
There was a commitment to truth greater than today.
Let's put it that way.
Because the left was not that powerful then.
And truth is not a left-wing value.
It's a liberal value and a conservative value.
And liberals who tend left would similarly not have a commitment to it.
What I'm about to say may surprise many of you.
And I would totally understand if it did.
And it's a rare area where I differ with someone very dear to me.
But the more I have read about the Kennedy assassination, the more I have wondered if we have been told the whole truth.
I'll just leave it at that.
Truth.
But this Friedman quote is such a perfect example.
He himself said, I am not the source of this quote.
But everywhere.
he is given as the source of the quote I really I do sympathize with people I The issue that we had the discussion with this wonderful person in our lives was global warming and climate change and so on.
And she said, And I get it.
I don't know whom to believe.
Do you take a vote?
How do you know?
It's a very, very troubling issue.
But I do have one guideline.
▲
Export Selection