”The check is in the mail.” That`s only one of the many lies bandied about during the last 1,000 years. But to the credit of the human race, a few truths have also been told.
The Biggest Lies
1. ”A jug of wine, a loaf of bread and thou . . .” With these words from
”The Rubaiyat,” Mr. Khayyam (1048-1122) tried to convince his wife that the simple pleasures were all that really counted in life. She didn`t buy it. Neither have the approximately 44 generations of women who have followed her. 2. ”I`ll be home soon.” A common remark, made by soldiers to their wives as they departed in 1337 for what turned out to be the Hundred Years` War between England and France.
3. ”It`s probably just a cold.” The kind of call-me-in-the-morning diagnosis doctors delivered to patients in 1347, just as the Black Death broke out in Europe, eventually killing one-third of its population.
4. ”What harm can it do?” In 1496, Romano Pane, a monk traveling with Christopher Columbus, sang the praises of a ”bewitching vegetable” he found in the New World: tobacco.
5. ”I believe it is a peace for our time.” So said British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in 1938, upon his return from Munich with a peace treaty signed by Adolf Hitler that promised ”peace with honor.”
6. ”Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever,”
proclaimed George Wallace at his inauguration as governor of Alabama in 1963. 7. ”We are not going to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.” Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
8. ”I am 1,000 percent for Tom Eagleton.” So insisted Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern in 1972, one week before Eagleton, his vice presidential running mate, was forced off the ticket.
9. ”I am not a crook.” Richard Nixon in 1974.
10. ”Read my lips: no new taxes.” George Bush during the 1988 presidential election campaign.
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Some Great Truths
1. ”God is usually on the side of the big squadrons and against the small ones.” Roger, Comte de Bussy-Rabutin, 1677.
2. ”All men are created equal.” Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, 1776.
3. ”In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” As true today as when Benjamin Franklin said it in 1789.
4. ”A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln, 1858.
5. ”War is hell.” Spoken by William Tecumseh Sherman, the Civil War general, in 1879 to graduates at Michigan Military Academy.
6. ”When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it.” Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project, in 1945, on the development of the atomic bomb.
7. ”Television is a vast wasteland.” No one would contradict Newton Minow in 1961 or today.
8. ”After all, what does a politician have but his credibility?” Who could argue with Spiro Agnew in 1969 or today?
9. ”My own view was that the taping of conversations for historical purposes was a bad decision.” One of the understatements of the century, uttered by Richard Nixon in 1974.
10. ”There`s been an accident.” Jimmy Carter in 1980, acknowledging the failure of his mission to rescue the hostages in Iran.