The first reaction to truth is hatred.
Interpretation
Truth can often provoke negative emotions in people when first encountered.
This quote by Tertullian suggests that when people are confronted with the truth, especially if it contradicts their beliefs or desires, their initial response may be one of anger or aversion. This reaction often stems from discomfort and the challenges posed to their current understanding or perspective, highlighting a common human behavior where acceptance of reality requires a struggle.
In practice
In a debate about ethics, one might say this quote to highlight the resistance to uncomfortable truths.
Whatever is born is the work of God. So whatever is plastered on, is the devil's work.... How unworthy of the Christian name it is to wear a fictitious face - you on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined! You, to whom lying with the tongue is not lawful, are lying in appearance.
Nature soaks every evil with either fear or shame.
Examine then, and see if He be not the dispenser of kingdoms, who is Lord at once of the world which is ruled, and of man himself who rules; if He have not ordained the changes of dynasties, with their appointed seasons, who was before all time, and made the world a body of times; if the rise and the fall of states are not the work of Him, under whose sovereignty the human race once existed without states at all.
For it is really better for us not to know a thing, because [God] has not revealed it to us, than to know it according to manβs wisdom, because he has been bold enough to assume it.
We say, and we say openly, and while ye torture us, mangled and gory we cry out, "We worship God through Christ!" Believe Him a man: it is through Him and in Him that God willeth Himself to be known and worshipped.
Against Him those women sin who torment their skin with potions, stain their cheeks with rouge and extend the line of their eyes with black coloring. Doubtless they are dissatisfied with God's plastic skill. In their own persons they convict and censure the Artificer of all things.
Memory is a code to who we are, a collection of not just dates and facts but also of epic emotional struggles, epiphanies, transformations.
Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it's a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame's core.
The man has a theory. The woman has hipbones. Here comes Death.
I was raised a black child in the South, where you're indoctrinated into a religion that an oppressor gave you.
I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either.
All things are cause for either laughter or weeping.
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