quotations about truth
There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulent as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Like the gush of the morning light, truth must go forward.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Truth is strong enough to overcome all human sophistries.
AESCHINES
Timarchum
Truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favour.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Address to the International Diplomats, March 18, 2006
Truth wears an unchanging countenance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on Virginia
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing.
BRUCE LEE
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
If the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines, as to a health-giving medicine, until it obtained from God, by its faith and piety, the grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness, which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction ... for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Club of Queer Trades
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
TRUTH, such as it appears to us, can only be relative, because we ourselves, being relative creatures, have only a relative perception and judgment. We appreciate that which is true to ourselves, not that which is universally true. And truth may well assume an aspect to one different from that it assumes to another.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
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
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, January 8, 1925
Truth ... is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Rebecca"
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
Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
"Here Be Dragons"