That is, lies that are truth ‘from a certain point of view.’ Y’know like ‘Vader killed your father’ in the sense that Anakin became a horrible guy by the name of Vader.
From The Dark Knight:
One of Joker’s goons - ‘He said he’d make the voices go away and he’d replace them with sparkly lights!’ Yes, well, being blown up will make voices (and everything else) go away and there will be sparkly lights. You just may not get to see them.
“Lois, I never lie.”
(Except about what my name is.)
Oh, and Anakin was ALREADY a terrible guy. He simply became a terrible guy dressed all in black and ignoring everything Edna Mode died to tell us.
“The fundamentals of the U.S. economy are strong.” Sure, if by “fundamentals of the economy” you really mean workers, and if by “strong” you really mean some of them might still have jobs at the end of the decade.
Sorry to those of you who hate politics in non-political threads, but really - where are you going to find more “Jedi truths” than politics? (I love this term, BTW. I think it should become a new meme for referring to politicians’ not-quite-probably lies.
Cindy: What happened to Sully?
Matrix: I let him go.
I wanna tell you about the time I almost died…
Quote above is from Fallen, and the name of the character who speaks the line is, itself, a spoiler.
Well, yes, there’s that. I can forget about it because I never watched Episode II or III. Darth Maul was dead, there was going to be more Yoda, what was the point?
Moderator interjects: Yes, yes, but let’s not belabor the obvious. You’ve made your point, now let’s please NOT have any more examples in this thread from real-life politics.
Sorry. I really wasn’t trying to make a point or ruin the thread–it was the first example to come to mind.
“I’ll pull out.”
Dr. Manhattan:“You needn’t consider Rorschach. I strongly doubt he’ll reach civilization”
primarily because you just pulped him.
I’m picturing a line where the bad guy tells someone they’ll be happy for the rest of their life…knowing that he plans to kills them shortly.
I think to be a “jedi truth” you not only need to distort the truth, you need to outright lie and then claim when you’re caught that you were just distorting the truth.
Teach a man to make fire and he’ll be warm for the night. Light a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.
The Phoenix Wright games have a good one - it’s so ‘true’, the character even avoids having Psyche-Locks, which show up when a character is lying during the Investigation phases. (Which Nick notes after asking the question, so it’s not just one of the occasional PL fails.)
Spoiler for Justice For All: [spoiler]Matt Engarde: ‘I never killed anybody.’
Which is true. But doesn’t address the fact that he hired Shelly de Killer to kill the victim.[/spoiler]
So… ahem.
Feel free to edit and add to the article, I think this trope could go places.
That’s awesome. Is that yours, or is it a quote from somewhere?
I know it’s at least appeared in Jingo (from the Discworld series) by Terry Pratchett, though it originally read:
“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day. Set him alight and he’s warm for the rest of his life”
No clue if it came from before that, or even who said that, but it’s certainly a rather widespread uh… maxim.
Anyway if we get a couple more examples (with explanations) on TVTropes we can keep the article, not that I think anyone really cares, but still!
This is one of those threads where I’m positive I know examples but I’m too tired to remember any correctly. Tomorrow I’ll stare at my book/movie/video game collection and add a few.
I’m not sure if that’s a Jedi Truth…it’s more of misdirection.
Me to my son a short while ago:
“The money is put under your pillow by the tooth fairy”.
Well, my wife can call herself the tooth fairy if she wants. She has as good a claim to be a tooth fairy as anyone.
Honor Harrington to Andre Warnecke, negotiating for his escape in return for him not nuking the planet he was holding hostage :
Perfectly true - except that she fully intended for something “untoward” to happen. Which ended with his bodyguards dead, Warneke captured, and his ship nuked - which is untoward indeed.
Should have thought of this earlier; Glorfindel’s prophecy about the Witch King of Angmar :
And of course, he gets killed by a woman and a hobbit.