One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share.
Harry Frankfurt • On Bullshit
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One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is somuch bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes hisshare.
The statements made in a bull session differ from bullshit in that there is no pretense that this connection is being sustained. They are like bullshit by virtue of the fact that they are in some degree unconstrained by a concern with truth. This resemblance between bull sessions and bullshit is suggested also by the term shooting the bull,
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
In an entry for bull as so used, the OED suggests the following as definitive: “trivial, insincere, or untruthful talk or writing; nonsense.”
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
One response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the individual turns towar
... See moreHarry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit.
Harry G. Frankfurt • On Bullshit
It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth—this indifference to how things really are—that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.