Word: half-truth
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...good man is hard to find, and intolerable to men and gods once he is found. The age of the anti-hero tends to overlook this fascinating half-truth, which is the durable paradox at the core of Oedipus Rex and Othello. But Ken Kesey used it well in his short, cruelly focused first novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. McMurphy, laughing con man and indestructible alley fighter, cons his way into an insane asylum to escape the drudgery of a prison farm. His battle is with Big Nurse, the white-starched emasculator who bulls his ward...
...speech to the state legislature, Scranton blasted Pennsylvania labor officials as "demagogues" whose actions are "blatantly political and frankly hypocritical," whose weapons have been "distortion, half-truth, and a complete disregard for the future of Pennsylvania and its people." Indeed, said Scranton, these labor leaders "crucify both the unemployed and the working men and women of Pennsylvania on a cross of falsehoods...
...second popular half-truth is that de Gaulle is trying to build a neutralist "third force." Sometimes it is given suggested that his ulterior goal is a separate French bargain with the Soviets (a prospect which doubtless alarms the Harvard community less than it does the public at large). This particular myth has gone so far that the recent renewal of an old Franco-soviet trade agreement was described in the press as the harbinger of disaster...
...also belongs to a supernatural community-the Old Testament's Chosen People: "God has covenanted with the Jewish people that it shall transcend nature and history to Him alone . . . Without the belief that God has called the Jew to Himself, to call oneself a Jew is but a half-truth...
...library stacks as he can squirm. The mood was one of gloom, doom, and disdain for the U.S. and the road it is traveling: ¶ Princeton University President Robert F. Goheen, baccalaureate address: "Near and far the cheap and tawdry are glorified over achievements of solid worth; opiates of half-truth are seized in preference to realities of fact and need . . . We find ourselves as a nation on the defensive and as a people seemingly paralyzed in self-indulgence...