quotations about truth
Truth often spoils the dinner.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.
THOMAS CARLYLE
The French Revolution: A History
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Nun of Nidaros", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Physics, God, and the End of the World
You're never going to see the truth. [It's] what you're shooting for always and you always miss it. Every once in a while, you catch an edge of it. That's what's you hope for, I think, as an artist.
SAM SHEPARD
interview, 2005
To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
One reason, I verily believe, why many are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth is, that they have no set intent and purpose to use truth--to make it practical and operative.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Game of Thrones
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people -- as may be noticed of most young children -- does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.
DOROTHY CATHERINE FONTANA
"The Enterprise Incident", Star Trek
It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
For decades, critical social scientists and humanists have chipped away at the idea of truth. We've deconstructed facts, insisted that knowledge is situated and denied the existence of objectivity. The bedrock claim of critical philosophy, going back to Kant, is simple: We can never have certain knowledge about the world in its entirety. Claiming to know the truth is therefore a kind of assertion of power.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
As ten millions of circles can never make a square, so the united voice of myriads cannot lend the smallest foundation to falsehood.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Vicar of Wakefield
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
Supreme truths are the foundation on which repose the state of human society.
POPE LEO XIII
attributed, Day's Collacon
So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!
HORACE MANN
Thoughts