Insecurity twists meanings and poisons trust. In a closely beleaguered city every sentry is a potential traitor.
Graham GreeneRead
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Champagne inspires openness and honesty, while lie detectors focus on deception.
In this quote, Graham Greene suggests that the effects of champagne can lead individuals to speak their truth more freely and boldly, contrasting this with the cold, mechanical nature of lie detectors, which merely assess the ability to deceive. Greene highlights the idea that authentic communication often flourishes in an environment that encourages vulnerability and enthusiasm, rather than one that imposes fear of exposure or consequence.
Themes
ChampagneTruthHonestyLie DetectorCommunication
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote during a toast at a wedding to emphasize the importance of honesty in relationships.
More from Graham Greene
All quotes →It seemed to Scobie that life was immeasurably long. Couldn’t the test of man have been carried out in fewer years? Couldn’t we have committed our first major sin at seven, have ruined ourselves for love or hate at ten, have clutched at redemption on a fifteen-year-old deathbed?
Graham GreeneRead
God is love. I don't say the heart doesn't feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn't recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us - God's love.
Graham GreeneRead
Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.
Graham GreeneRead
Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.
Graham GreeneRead
Success is more dangerous than failure, the ripples break over a wider coastline.
Graham GreeneRead
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