quotations about truth
Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, October 30, 1703
Truth shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused.
JOHN WYCLIFFE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Truths kindle light for truths.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
For any truth, if overdone ... if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its applicability, can be reduced to absurdity.
VLADIMIR LENIN
Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder
Truth is always like oil in water ... No matter how much of water you add ... it always floats on top.
AHMED MUSA
"Who are you to judge the life I live? Leicester City's Musa slams critics", The 42, May 2, 2017
It is some disaster for any mind to hold any one thing for truth that is untrue, however insignificant it be, or however honestly it be held. It is a greater disaster when the false prejudice bars the way to some truth behind it, which, but for it, would find an entrance to the soul; and the greatness of the disaster will in this case be measured by the importance of the excluded truth.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
OSCAR WILDE
The Nightingale and the Rose
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
WILL ROGERS
The Illiterate Digest
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Truth is truth, though from an enemy, and spoken in malice.
GEORGE LILLO
George Barnwell; or, the London Merchant
Questions don't change the truth. But they give it motion.
GIANNINA BRASCHI
Empire of Dreams
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
MARK TWAIN
Following the Equator
Will you tell me how a man's to live, and face his life, if he can't believe that truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen though it takes all the years there are? While I stand up and have breath in my lungs I shall be one flame of that fire; it's all the life I have.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Some truths may be proclaimed upon the housetop; others may be spoken by the fireside; still others must be whispered in the ear of a friend.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
It is dangerous to follow truth too near, lest she should kick out our teeth.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
attributed, Day's Collacon
The usefulest truths are the plainest.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light -- every eye looking on finds its own.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana