"A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent"
About this Quote
Blake lands a gut-punch in the form of a moral paradox: the most corrosive thing in public life isn’t always a lie, but a fact weaponized. The line doesn’t defend dishonesty; it indicts the smug cruelty that hides behind “I’m just being honest.” Bad intent turns truth into a bludgeon, giving it a special authority that lies can’t easily counterfeit. A lie can be dismissed as fiction; a true statement, delivered to humiliate, control, or provoke, carries the stamp of inevitability. It feels unanswerable, which is exactly why it “beats” the lies you can invent.
The craft is deceptively simple. Blake’s sing-song rhythm and internal logic sound like a proverb, the kind of moral common sense you’d teach a child. That’s the trap. He uses the clean, almost nursery-rhyme cadence to smuggle in a darker thesis: ethics isn’t located only in the accuracy of speech, but in the motive driving it. The line forces a reader to confront how often “truth” functions as social performance, a way to claim superiority while disavowing responsibility.
Context matters. Blake, writing in an age of revolution, religious authority, and expanding print culture, understood how righteous language can harden into oppression. His work repeatedly exposes institutions that baptize domination as virtue. Here, he gives us a diagnostic tool for modern discourse: the problem isn’t misinformation alone, it’s the pleasure of harm wearing the mask of candor.
The craft is deceptively simple. Blake’s sing-song rhythm and internal logic sound like a proverb, the kind of moral common sense you’d teach a child. That’s the trap. He uses the clean, almost nursery-rhyme cadence to smuggle in a darker thesis: ethics isn’t located only in the accuracy of speech, but in the motive driving it. The line forces a reader to confront how often “truth” functions as social performance, a way to claim superiority while disavowing responsibility.
Context matters. Blake, writing in an age of revolution, religious authority, and expanding print culture, understood how righteous language can harden into oppression. His work repeatedly exposes institutions that baptize domination as virtue. Here, he gives us a diagnostic tool for modern discourse: the problem isn’t misinformation alone, it’s the pleasure of harm wearing the mask of candor.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
|---|---|
| Source | William Blake, poem 'Auguries of Innocence' — contains the line “A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent”. |
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