quotations about truth
Truth is always revolutionary.
ELIAS KHOURY
"Truth is always revolutionary", Malta Today, August 30, 2016
Truth, like good medicine, is oftentimes repugnant to our present feelings, but gives vigour afterwards.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth is the one thing in nature always consistent with itself, and it is the one guide given to us in steering on the ocean of fate.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to George E. Pickett, February 22, 1841
Generally speaking, "truth" is a statement about what is perceived as real. And the truth is that truth is always contested. Facts can always be challenged and interpreted differently. If shared by many in a society, truths turn into societal beliefs.
CORA PFAFFEROTT
"Is 'post-truth' just a convenient lie?", Chron, January 23, 2017
Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.
ALAN ARKIN
Esquire, March 2007
Truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
History of Sexuality
Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
If I hear the way of truth in the morning, I am content even to die in the evening.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
Truth ...
Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Black Riders and Other Lines
Error is related to truth as sleep to waking. I have observed that on awakening from error a man turns again to truth as with new vigour.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The most effectual method of expelling error, is, not to meet it sword in hand, but gradually to instill great truths, with which it cannot easily coexist.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
Truth lies in a small compass, and if a well has been assigned her, for a habitation, it is as appropriate from its narrowness, as its depth.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
ANDRE GIDE
So Be It; or, The Chips Are Down
There is no religion higher than the truth.
MARK FROST
The List of Seven
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.
PHILIP ROTH
The Human Stain
It is far more difficult, I assure you, to live for the truth than to die for it.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be, that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be not so much blood in them, as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor, which men take in finding out of truth, nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural, though corrupt love, of the lie itself. One of the later school of the Grecians, examineth the matter, and is at a stand, to think what should be in it, that men should love lies; where neither they make for pleasure, as with poets, nor for advantage, as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot tell; this same truth, is a naked, and open day-light, that doth not show the masks, and mummeries, and triumphs, of the world, half so stately and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond, or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men's minds, vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds, of a number of men, poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Truth", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul.
MAXIM GORKY
The Lower Depths