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.
Objects are what matter. Only they carry the evidence that throughout the centuries something really happened among human beings.
That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman?
Heaven is within us, and we experience it to the degree that we become conscious of it.
After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn't do it.
The Convention thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.
...the person who surrenders absolutely to God, with no reservations, is absolutely safe. From this safe hiding-place he can see the devil , but the devil cannot see him.
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