The lie gets the job done.
The truth cleans up the mess.

The philosopher converts
emotion into principle
in a process guided
by a principle that was
itself once an emotion.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on "evidence" takes a remark of A.J. Ayer's as an epigraph: "For my own part, I think that if one were looking for a single phrase to capture the stage to which philosophy has progressed, ‘the study of evidence’ would be a better choice than ‘the study of language’."

We might say that modern poetics is likewise the study of fabrication. "Il miglior fabbro" and all that.

People don't kill people; God kills people. If it were up to us there'd be no end of murder. There's too much hate and greed in us. No, let us leave it to God, who loves us and wants for nothing. One day, he'll stop killing us forever.

To understand an ideal is simply to obey. There is nothing more to see. Likewise, to "obey reality" is but to understand it. That's all it's asking you to do.

(More here.)