The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability.We say that a sentence isfactually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to 44 verify the proposition which it purports to express ö that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false.

-Ayer, SirAlfred Jules
  Language, Truth and Logic, ch.1

Be so true to thyself as thou be not false to others.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.23,'Of  Wisdom for a Man's Self'.

Tout est faux, il n'y a personne†il n'y a rien. Everything is false. There is no one†there is nothing.

-Beckett, Samuel
  Nouvelles et textes pour rien.

It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.

-Berkeley, George
  Maxims Concerning Patriotism.

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

-Bible (NewTestament)
St Matthew 7:15.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was prov'd true before, Prove false again? Two hundred more.

-Butler, Samuel
  Hudibras, pt.3, canto1, l.1277^80.

Pour ce qu'alors je de¤  sirais vaquer seulement a'   la recherche de la ve¤  rite¤ ,  je pensai qu'il fallait que je†rejetasse comme absolument faux tout ce en quoi je pourrais imaginer le moindre doute, afin de voir s'il ne resterait point, apre'  s cela, quelque chose en ma cre¤  ance qui f u" t entie'  rement indubitable. Sincemy present aimwastogivemyself up tothepursuit of truth alone, I thought I must†reject as if absolutely false anything as to which I could imagine the least doubt, in order to see if I should not be left at the end believing something that was absolutely indubitable.

-Descartes, Rene¤
  Discours de la me¤  thode (Discourse on Method), 4th discourse (translated by G E M  Anscombe and Peter Geach).

Je pris garde que, pendant queje voulais ainsi penserque tout e¤  tait faux, il fallait ne¤  cessairement que moi, qui le pensais, fusse quelque chose. Deschamps I noticed that while I was trying to thinkeverything false, it must needs be that I, who was thinking this, was something.

-Descartes, Rene¤
  Discours de la me¤  thode (Discourse on Method), 4th discourse (translated by G E M  Anscombe and Peter Geach).

In friendship false, implacable in hate: Resolved to ruin or to rule the state.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.173^4.

My thoughtless youth was winged with vain desires, My manhood, long misled by wandering fires, Followed false lights; and when their glimpse was gone My pride struck out new sparkles of her own† Good life be now my task: my doubts are done; (What more could fright my faith thanThree in One?)

-Dryden,John
  The Hind and the Panther, pt.1, l.71^6.

I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.

-Einstein, Albert
  The World as I See It.

The origin of all science is in the desire to know causes; and the origin of all false science and imposture is in the desire to accept false causes rather than none; or, which 388 is the same thing, in the unwillingness to acknowledge our own ignorance.

-Hazlitt,William
  In The Atlas,15 Feb.

The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of thesituation evoking a new behavior which makes the originally false conception come true. The specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error.

-Merton, Robert King
  'The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy', in Social Theory and Social Structure (rev. edn,1968), p.477. This is the first use of the phrase 'self-fulfilling prophecy'.

For to interpose a little ease, Let our frail thoughts dally with false surmise.

-Milton,John
  Lycidas, l.152^3.

My native heath is brown beneath, My native waters blue; But crimson red o'er both shall spread, Ere I am false to you, Dear land! Ere I am false to you.

-O'Hagan,John pseudonym Sliabh Cuilinn
  'Dear Land' in The Spirit of the Nation.

Search then the Ruling Passion:There, alone, The wild are constant and the cunning known; The fool consistent, and the false sincere; Priests, princes, women, no dissemblers here. This clue once found, unravels all the rest.

-Pope, Alexander
  Epistles to Several Persons,'To Lord Cobham', l.174^8.

The true poet is most easily distinguished from the false when he trusts himself to the simplest expression and writes without adjectives.

-Pound, Ezra Loomis
Quoted in Patricia C Willis (ed) The Complete Poems of Marianne Moore (1986).

Unsterblichkeit der Individualit a« t verlangen heiÞt eigentlich einen Irrtum ins Unendliche perpetuieren wollen. Denn im Grunde ist doch jede Individualit a« t nur ein spezieller Irrtum, Fehltritt, etwas, das besser nicht w a« re, ja wovon uns zuru«  ckzubringen der eigentliche Zweck des Lebens ist. To desire immortality for theindividual isreally thesame as wanting to perpetuate an error for ever; for at bottom every individuality is really only a special error, a false step, something that it would be better should not be, in fact something from which it isthe real purpose of life to bring us back.

-Schopenhauer, Arthur
  DieWelt alsWille undVorstellung (TheWorld asWill and Representation), vol.2, ch.41 (translated by E F J Payne).

Quite as many false ideas prevail as to woman's true position in the home as to her status elsewhere. Womanhood is the great fact in her life; wifehood and motherhood are but incidental relations.

-Stanton, Elizabeth ne¤  e  Cady
The History ofWoman Suffrage1848^61, vol.1, introduction.

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die. Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year isgoing, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.

-Tennyson
  In Memoriam A.H.H., canto106, l.1^8.