June 2011
Beginner
226 pages
2h 51m
English
Idea 30: Truth, the greatest communicator of all
Truth has such a face and such a mien,
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687)
I won’t try to define truth, for no one can. Call it a value, if you like. If so, it is a universal one. ‘We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism,’ wrote French mathematician, physicist and religious philosopher Blaise Pascal. Or, as Shakespeare put it in more homely language, ‘Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning.’
Truth – the truth of the content or material, which becomes the common focus of attention – is immensely important in communication. It is the star that every good communicator steers by. You can command all the media, you can know all the tricks ...
