War & Peace Quote by Alfred Adler

Adler is warning that honesty can be a socially acceptable form of cruelty. The line pivots on a moral ambush: we tend to treat “truth” as self-justifying, but he frames it as a weapon - not a virtue - depending on how it’s used. That inversion is classic Adler: he’s less interested in abstract ethics than in the hidden motives that drive behavior, especially the ways people pursue power, superiority, or security under the cover of good intentions.

“The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression” lands because it names a familiar tactic without sentimentalizing it: the sharp “I’m just being honest” remark, the unsolicited “reality check,” the confession delivered at the worst possible moment. Adler’s psychological insight is that the content can be accurate while the purpose is hostile. Truth becomes a socially polished blade: it lets the speaker claim integrity while inflicting dominance, humiliation, or control.

The second sentence tightens the screw. “It is possible to lie...with the truth” points to selective truth-telling, strategic omission, and context-stripping - ways of manipulating a narrative without ever stating a falsehood. Then “even to murder” escalates the idea from interpersonal spite to existential harm: reputations destroyed, relationships ended, a person’s will to live eroded by “facts” used as verdicts rather than information.

Contextually, this fits Adler’s broader project of reading speech as behavior. He’s asking us to judge statements not only by accuracy, but by intention and effect: is truth being offered as illumination, or deployed as aggression wearing the mask of principle?