Don't Blindly Trust Written Words, Warns Maimonides

"Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen." 

Written in 1172 by Maimonides, this warning from one of history's greatest scholars has never been more relevant. In an era of infinite written content, viral headlines, and weaponized information, Maimonides' core instruction, that the written word carries no automatic credibility, cuts straight to the heart of how we consume, share, and believe what we read. A masterclass in critical thinking from the 12th century that applies to modern day.

Transcript

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Welcome to the Quotive Corner. Today's quote was written in the 12th century, and I want you to consider, as we go through it, just how little the problem it describes has changed in 900 years. If anything, it's gotten worse. Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. That's Maimonides, Moses ben Maimon, known in the Jewish tradition as Rambam, one of the most towering intellectual figures of the medieval world. Born in Cordoba, Spain in 1135, he was a rabbi, philosopher, physician, and scholar whose work shaped Jewish law, theology, and philosophy for centuries and continues to influence all three to this day. He wrote prolifically across medicine, ethics, and religious thought. This quote comes from the Ygeret Teman, the Epistle to Yemen, a letter he wrote to the Jewish community of Yemen in 1172, during a period of intense religious persecution and pressure to abandon their faith. The full passage continues. Let's first discuss the quote in its context. Maimonides was writing to a community under pressure, being presented with written arguments designed to undermine their faith and compel conversion. His warning was specific. The pen is no more trustworthy than the tongue that guides it. A dishonest argument doesn't become honest because it's been written down, formatted, bound, and handed to you with apparent authority. That was the twelfth century. Now consider what it looks like today. We are drowning in written content. Articles, studies, reports, posts, threads, white papers, books, op-eds, newsletters, captions, subtitles, transcripts. The written word has never been more abundant, more accessible, or more thoroughly weaponized. And the instinct Maimonides was warning against the assumption that something written carries inherent credibility has not diminished. If anything, it's been amplified by the speed at which written content now travels and the authority that certain formats still command. A headline gets shared without the article being read. A statistic gets cited without the methodology being examined. A book gets referenced without the argument being scrutinized. A study gets invoked without anyone checking who funded it, what it actually measured, or whether it's been replicated. The written form provides a veneer of legitimacy that the underlying content may not deserve. And Maimonides, writing before the printing press existed, somehow anticipated exactly this. The mechanism he's identifying is the conflation of form and substance. Written language has a formality to it, a permanence, a structure, that oral communication lacks. When something is written down, it implies that someone thought carefully enough to commit it, that it passed through some level of deliberation before reaching you. That implication is not always earned. But the brain registers it anyway. We are wired, to some degree, to extend more credibility to what we read than to what we hear. Maimonides is saying, override that wiring. In a previous episode, we discussed how Robert Frost gave us the definition of education as the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your composure or your self-confidence. Maimonides is making the reading equivalent of that argument. The educated reader can encounter a written claim, however authoritative its packaging, without automatically deferring to it. They bring the same critical faculty to text that a skilled listener brings to speech. They ask, is this actually true? What's the evidence? Who is saying it and why? What would a skeptic say in response? Lao Tzu observed that he who knows does not speak, and he who speaks does not know. Pointing at the gap between performed expertise and genuine depth, Maimonides is making a companion observation about the written version of the same gap. The liar who deceives with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen. Confidence of delivery, oral or written, is not evidence of accuracy. It is evidence of confidence, nothing more. This is especially pointed in an era of what we might loosely call information warfare. The deliberate production and distribution of written content designed not to inform, but to persuade, manipulate, or mislead. Propaganda has always existed, but its reach was once limited by the cost and logistics of production. Those barriers are gone. Anyone with a device can produce written content that looks, at a glance, indistinguishable from carefully researched journalism or scholarship. The form has been democratized. The responsibility to evaluate it has fallen entirely to the reader. And this is where Maimonides' warning becomes not just intellectually interesting, but practically urgent. Because the default, for most people, most of the time, is still to extend more trust to the written word than it automatically deserves. We share things we haven't read, we cite things we haven't verified, we form opinions on the basis of headlines, summaries, and excerpts rather than original sources. And when challenged, we sometimes fall back on the very thing Maimonides is warning against. But I read it somewhere. Reading it somewhere is not proof. It is a starting point for inquiry, nothing more. This connects directly to something Montesquieu warned us about that we discussed in a prior episode, that the greatest tyranny operates under the shield of law and in the name of justice. The written word, like the law, provides a shield, it carries the appearance of deliberation and authority. And precisely because it carries that appearance, it can be used to justify things that don't deserve justification. The antidote, in both cases, is the same. Look past the form to the substance. Ask what is actually being claimed, what actually supports it, and who actually benefits from you believing it. The honest counterpoint is worth naming clearly. Not all skepticism is wisdom. The person who reflexively distrusts everything written, who treats every book, every study, every documented source as equally suspect, has overcorrected into a kind of epistemic nihilism that is just as dangerous as uncritical acceptance. Maimonides wasn't arguing for the rejection of written evidence, he was arguing against its uncritical acceptance. The goal is discernment, the practiced ability to evaluate the quality of an argument on its merits rather than its medium. That discernment is harder than it sounds, and it requires effort that most of us prefer not to expend. It's easier to accept than to verify. It's easier to share than to scrutinize. It's easier to believe something that confirms what we already think than to deal with the discomfort of uncertainty while we evaluate it properly. Maimonides knew this in 1172. He was writing to people under pressure, being offered convenient written arguments that would have made their difficult lives easier if only they accepted them. His message was The convenience of the argument is not evidence of its truth. The authority of the form is not evidence of the integrity of the content. Think, examine, question. Nine hundred years later, with more written content available to us in a single day than Maimonides encountered in a lifetime, the instruction hasn't changed. It's just more urgent. Thanks for spending a few minutes here at the Quote of Corner. If this one makes you pause a little longer before you share the next thing you read, to actually read it, to ask where it comes from, to consider who wrote it and why. That's exactly what Maimonides was asking for. And remember, wisdom isn't in the quote, it's in the reflection. Looking forward to seeing you in the next episode.