Lying is the worst of all evils. Everything else that is diabolical comes from it. And we have been lied to; public opinion is constantly deceived. Not a page of a newspaper is free of lies, whether it deals with political, economic, historical, social, or cultural affairs. Truth is under pressure everywhere; the facts are distorted, twisted, and made into their opposite. Can this turn out well? No, things can’t go on like this, for the sake of human nature and the free human spirit. The liars and those who distort the truth must perish and be deprived of their power to rule by force, and then there may be room for a freer, nobler kind of humanity again.
-- from diary of Cpt. Wilm Hosenfeld, German Army, late August 1942, excerpted in the second edition of Władysław Szpilman’s The Pianist.
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@online{swiderski2016,
author = {Swiderski, J. I.},
title = {What Cowards We Are, Thinking Ourselves Above All This, but
Letting It Happen.},
date = {2016-12-31},
url = {https://jski.net/posts/what-cowards-we-are-thinking-ourselves-above-all-this-but-letting-it-happen.html},
langid = {en}
}