Sublime

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

From observing Elliott Smith I learned that being a decent person is terribly important, but being a “nice guy” is not important at all.

“I think it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote that one should never trust people who claim they’re normal. It’s in one of his novels.”

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.

Now assuming that Wittgenstein does indeed regard Pascal’s characterization of how she feels as an instance of bullshit, why does it strike him that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives what Pascal says as being—roughly speaking, for now—unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane to the enterprise of

Caring about something differs not only from wanting it, and from wanting it more than other things. It differs also from taking it to be intrinsically valuable.

Immanuel Kant has made it one of his fundamentals of moral life—it is. He used to say that to treat a person as a means is the most immoral act there is. It is, because when you treat another person as a means—for your gratification, for your sexual desire, for your fear, or for something else—when you use another person as a means you are reducing

The trouble with her statement is that it purports to convey something more than simply that she feels bad. Her characterization of her feeling is too specific; it is excessively particular.

Another worthwhile source is the title essay in The Prevalence of Humbug by Max Black.