Truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent.

These lines come from William Blake’s satirical poem “Auguries of Innocence,” written in the early 19th century (often dated c. 1803) and published posthumously. The poem is a long sequence of rhyming couplets that juxtapose innocence and cruelty, moral perception and social hypocrisy, using vivid images of animals, children, and everyday acts to expose spiritual and ethical corruption. In this setting, Blake’s couplet targets the misuse of moral language: even “truth” can become a weapon when spoken to wound, shame, or dominate rather than to illuminate. The remark fits Blake’s broader critique of self-righteousness and institutional morality in his prophetic and lyric work.

Blake argues that the ethical value of speech depends not only on factual accuracy but on intention. A statement can be literally true yet morally worse than an outright lie if it is delivered to harm—through spite, humiliation, or manipulative “honesty.” The couplet challenges the assumption that truth-telling is automatically virtuous, insisting that malice can corrupt even accurate words. It also implies that lies may sometimes be comparatively less destructive than truths used as instruments of cruelty, because the latter carry the authority of fact while inflicting damage. In the poem’s wider moral vision, perception and compassion are inseparable: truth without charity becomes another form of violence.

“Truth told with bad intent / Beats all the lies you can invent.”