quotations about truth
Truth upholds the earth; by truth the Sun shines; the winds blow by truth; and everything else subsists by truth.
CHANAKYA
Vridda-Chanakya
Truth is death to the portrait painter.
FRANCIS A. DURIVAGE
"The Career of an Artist"
He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
REBECCA WEST
The Meaning of Treason
Truth was the only daughter of Time.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
Although the truth is not always pleasant, the truth is always a gift because it offers the recipient of that information the chance to change the outcome.
DENISE RESTAURI
"Four Words That Give This CEO The Courage To Take On The Beauty Industry", Forbes, December 8, 2016
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist
Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those "truths" we once believed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"Truth Will Have No Other Gods Alongside It"
An ingenious web of probabilities is the surest screen a wise man can place between himself and the truth.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth -- and truth rewarded me.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
All Said and Done
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.
DAVID FOSTER WALLACE
Infinite Jest
The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
An adherence to truth, open and without reservation, has, from the age of chivalry downwards, been considered as one of the loftiest attributes of a "gentleman"; so much so, that, to brand as "a liar" the pretender to such a title, is one of the most deadly insults that you can offer him.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs -- the truth from the beginning.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook C", Aphorisms