Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if

Hear the gravelly wisdom of Tom Waits, who once declared: “Most people don’t care if you’re telling them the truth or if you’re telling them a lie, as long as they’re entertained by it. You find that out really fast.” In these words is laid bare a truth as sharp as a blade and as old as civilization itself. Humanity, in its hunger for story, has often valued entertainment over truth, illusion over reality, performance over substance. Waits, a bard of the strange and the broken, knew that the crowd is quick to trade clarity for spectacle, and sincerity for delight. It is a teaching both mournful and illuminating: that men and women crave not only truth, but enchantment—and too often they will settle for the latter, even when it blinds them.

The ancients themselves bore witness to this tension. In the Roman arenas, the people demanded bread and circuses, not justice or wisdom. The emperors learned well that if they gave the people entertainment, they could distract them from oppression, corruption, and decay. Truth could be buried beneath the roar of the crowd, so long as the games continued. Waits speaks from this same recognition: when the heart longs to be stirred, the difference between a lie and the truth fades into irrelevance, drowned in the intoxication of spectacle.

Consider the story of the Trojan Horse. The people of Troy, weary from war, desperate for victory, were presented with a tale too beautiful to resist: that the enemy had abandoned the field and left behind a great gift. The lie was dressed as a marvel, and because it entertained their hopes and delighted their pride, they embraced it. They did not ask whether it was true—they asked only whether it pleased them. And by the time they discovered the truth, the city was already in flames.

The origin of Waits’s reflection comes from the life of a performer, one who stood before audiences night after night and saw how they responded. He knew that the crowd does not weigh every word, does not dissect fact from fiction, but rather listens for what sparks the imagination. The storyteller, the singer, the actor—these have always lived in the borderlands between truth and illusion. And the performer learns quickly that the measure of a tale is not always its honesty, but its power to move the heart.

Yet this teaching is not only a lament. For though it reveals the weakness of the crowd, it also reveals the strength of art. If people hunger for stories, then the artist holds great power: the power to cloak truth in the garments of entertainment, to speak reality through parable, song, or myth. Thus the danger is also the opportunity. Lies can enthrall, yes—but so can truths, if they are told with fire. The choice rests in the heart of the storyteller.

The lesson is this: never forget that human beings crave wonder more than fact alone. If you would speak truth, do not present it as cold stone; carve it into a shape that stirs the spirit. If you would resist lies, learn to recognize when entertainment is being used as a veil to deceive you. Ask yourself: does this story move me because it is true, or merely because it dazzles me? In this vigilance lies wisdom.

Practical steps follow. As a listener, be discerning—seek stories that enlighten, not merely amuse. As a speaker, remember that truth must often be sung, painted, or woven into narrative if it is to take root in the hearts of others. Do not despise entertainment, for it is a tool, but do not be enslaved by it. Demand that the stories which move you also carry truth within them. For though most people may not care whether they are being lied to, you can choose to care, and in that choice, you guard both your mind and your soul.

Thus Tom Waits’s words endure as both warning and challenge: truth and lies compete not on the grounds of fact, but on the grounds of enchantment. The crowd will choose the story that entertains—but the wise will choose the story that enlightens. Let us, then, not only crave wonder, but crave truth woven with wonder, that we may be both stirred and awakened, not merely dazzled and deceived.