Truth Teller #19 Lord Bertrand Russell

 Mathematician and Philosopher Bertrand Russell was jailed for his opposition to the First World War. Although willing to be jailed for what he believed, he was not dogmatic. He famously remarked “I would never die for my beliefs, I might be wrong.”

Truth Teller #17 G.K. Chesterton

 Chesterton was an English philosopher, apologist for Christianity, author of the Father Brown mystery novels and literary and art critic. He showed an early talent for visual art, but did not finish art school. That was a good move, as he was to develop into a writer of such stature he was cited as an influence by Argentinian great Jorge Luis Borges. As author of as many as 80 books, he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1935.

Truth Teller #3 Hannah Arendt

Truth tellers #3 Hannah Arendt. The thinker whose book “Eichman in Jerusalem” about the trial of prominent Nazi Adolph Eichman gave us the chilling idea of “The banality of evil.” In the book, she describes how an ordinary person can become a monster, yet remain seemingly normal. Such people try to live in a moral twilight, never deciding between good and bad. As Arendt observed ”The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Truth Teller #7 Edmund Burke

Truth Teller #7 Edmund Burke. I will throw conservatives a bone here by quoting the father of modern conservatism. I think his observation that government is a pact between the dead, the living and the yet born is majestic, concise and true today as it was when he wrote the words in the late 1700s. But now that we have the power to wipe humanity off the planet, I believe the meaning of that truth has changed.