...
whether a piece of futile, unimportant and inconsequential information is true or false can be of interest to no one.
...
Something that is good for nothing cannot be owed to anybody; for something to be owed to somebody, it must be actually or potentially useful. Thus the truth which we owe to one another is that which concerns justice, and it is a profanation of the holy name of truth to apply it to trivial things of which the existence is a matter of general indifference and the knowledge totally useless. Truth without any possible usefulness can therefore never be something we owe to one another; it follows therefore that anyone who conceals or disguises it is not telling a lie.
Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Fourth Walk.
It's Rousseau in paranoid mode, wondering when it's acceptable to tell a lie (prompted by the belief that the Abbé Rozier has stolen his motto and is taunting him by sarcastically writing it on a pamphlet). He's talking about when you are obliged to speak the truth, rather than what the truth is, but there are some interesting similarities with the American pragmatists' thoughts on truth (I'm reading Richard Rorty's Philosophy and Social Hope, too).
