quotations about truth
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
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
The fact is, all people have a bias of some sort or another. It cannot be helped. All human beings are inculcated with it through their families, friends, culture, education, economic status, and a variety of factors in life. A search for truth is always done by a person, or persons, who are biased in some way. The difficulty for the seeker of authenticity is not to somehow overcome one's biases. The test is when the seeker finds a fact, or data set, that incline against their prejudice. The challenge is to realize that what is real, in any particular case, should prevail over the bias.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
"Truth will prevail." It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
In matter of fact, truth leaves a man at liberty to judge for himself, whilst falsehood, dreading the consequences of investigation, chooses to judge for him.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Some folk never handle the truth without scratching it.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
ROBERT FROST
"The Black Cottage"
Call it what you want: relativism, constructivism, deconstruction, postmodernism, critique. The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
The truth is always on trial.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear