Dennis Prager Show - How Do We Know What Is Truth?
Aired: 2024-01-29
Duration: 06:36


=== Pessimists vs. Optimists (06:29) ===

[00:00:00]  Okay, let's see.
[00:00:01]  Here it is.
[00:00:02]  Pessimists are usually right, and optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
[00:00:10]  Okay?
[00:00:11]  So that was a quote I used in my Bible commentary.
[00:00:16]  Everywhere I looked.
[00:00:17]  So here, a quote by Thomas L. Friedman in Goodreads.
[00:00:22]  That's a very, very big site about books that are recommended to you.
[00:00:27]  That's in Goodreads.
[00:00:29]  Let's see.
[00:00:30]  A to Z quotes.
[00:00:32]  Thomas Friedman quotes.
[00:00:34]  Pessimists are usually right, but optimists.
[00:00:37]  And optimists are usually wrong, but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.
[00:00:42]  So Goodreads, and A to Z quotes, and McKinsey and Company, and let's see, who else has it?
[00:00:54]  LinkedIn.
[00:00:57]  Reddit.
[00:01:01]  Everybody.
[00:01:04]  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.
[00:01:18]  Truth is everything.
[00:01:21]  So I was simply...
[00:01:24]  I'm interested because if I'm putting this quote into my Bible commentary, then I need to give it the proper attribution.
[00:01:35]  I'm a very big stickler on that.
[00:01:38]  I am the opposite of Claudine Gay.
[00:01:43]  I am fanatical about not plagiarizing, for moral reasons, not even legal reasons.
[00:01:52]  So I have to find out the source of the quote.
[00:01:55]  So fine, if Thomas Friedman, whom I don't particularly care for, is the source, so what?
[00:02:02]  It's a good quote.
[00:02:03]  I'll use it.
[00:02:04]  I can't use it without attributing it to the author of the quote.
[00:02:09]  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?
[00:02:23]  Like, where did he say it?
[00:02:25]  Well, I found it.
[00:02:27]  And you know what he said?
[00:02:30]  As someone much smarter than I once said, and then he gives the quote.
[00:02:36]  It is not from Thomas Friedman.
[00:02:38]  Thomas Friedman never claimed it was from Thomas Friedman.
[00:02:41]  Thomas Friedman himself said it was from somebody else.
[00:02:44]  We don't know who it was from.
[00:02:46]  This is a very disturbing thing.
[00:02:54]  Thank you.
[00:02:55]  Very, very disturbing.
[00:02:57]  That a quotation site does not look up the source of the quotation.
[00:03:07]  What the hell are they there for?
[00:03:12]  It's the one thing they do and they don't do it well.
[00:03:25]  Someone dear to me and my wife and I, we had a very interesting and I guess sad discussion with her over the weekend.
[00:03:42]  A truly good soul.
[00:03:45]  And she said, I simply don't know what to believe.
[00:03:50]  And Americans didn't say that 50 years ago.
[00:04:00]  Thank you.
[00:04:01]  Thank you.
[00:04:03]  Historians had a commitment to truth.
[00:04:08]  Anthropologists did.
[00:04:10]  Sociologists did.
[00:04:14]  There was a commitment to truth.
[00:04:17]  It doesn't mean every American told the truth.
[00:04:21]  For those of you who went to college and don't understand the purpose of a generalization, I just needed to add that.
[00:04:29]  There was a commitment to truth greater than today.
[00:04:32]  Let's put it that way.
[00:04:35]  Because the left was not that powerful then.
[00:04:38]  And truth is not a left-wing value.
[00:04:41]  It's a liberal value and a conservative value.
[00:04:49]  And liberals who tend left would similarly not have a commitment to it.
[00:04:59]  What I'm about to say may surprise many of you.
[00:05:05]  And I would totally understand if it did.
[00:05:10]  And it's a rare area where I differ with someone very dear to me.
[00:05:19]  But the more I have read about the Kennedy assassination, the more I have wondered if we have been told the whole truth.
[00:05:26]  I'll just leave it at that.
[00:05:31]  Truth.
[00:05:35]  But this Friedman quote is such a perfect example.
[00:05:39]  He himself said, I am not the source of this quote.
[00:05:45]  But everywhere.
[00:05:46]  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.

=== Very Troubling Issue (00:21) ===

[00:06:15]  And she said, And I get it.
[00:06:18]  I don't know whom to believe.
[00:06:24]  Do you take a vote?
[00:06:28]  How do you know?
[00:06:31]  It's a very, very troubling issue.
[00:06:35]  But I do have one guideline.