quotations about truth
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth is beauty. That can be a hard thing to say, because some things are not so attractive on the surface. But by owning up to them, we change them--just by speaking them.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004
If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink or companionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be in a condition to enunciate great truths. But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so much sand and so many sunsets. Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity and long night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him his message would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, the very shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificent aloofness.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
The truth of the scholar, alone in his study, does not always accord with what the world at large considers to be true.
EIJI YOSHIKAWA
Musashi
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
Truth doesn't run on time like a commuter train.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India 1924-1926
Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.
GOTTFRIED WILHELM LEIBNIZ
La monadologie
If we think we have found truth for ourselves, above all things, let us not impose it on one another. Let us lock upon it all the doors of consciousness. For however inspiring it may be to us, however ennobling, when once we try to impose it on another it becomes a poison.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Truth", Intimations
A concealed truth, that's all a lie is. Either by omission or commission we never do more than obscure. The truth stays in the undergrowth, waiting to be discovered.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
The truth
Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives
By suffering.
Nothing speaks the truth,
Nothing tells us how things really are,
Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
AESCHYLUS
The Oresteia
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
ANAÏS NIN
diary, Fall 1943
He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
DANIEL DEFOE
The History of the Union Between England and Scotland
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
Truth is the backbone of character. Nothing is beautiful or strong or permanent without truth. All qualifications that go to make up noble manhood count for naught where there is not a persistent adherence to truthfulness. As the mirror reflects objects as they are, without alteration, so truth presents everything as it is.
HENRY F. KLETZING
"Truth"
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
L'Envoi