quotations about truth
The truth--a hideous spectacle!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Penetrant"
The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society. Falsehood is so appealingly packaged that without good knowledge of the truth, one could be misled and ensnared. However, acquaintance with the truth would help identify the length and breath of falsehood, unmask and demystify its attendant effect.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
lecture at Workers' Educational Association, May 1940
You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.
SATHYA SAI BABA
Thought for the Day, October 5, 2008
There are always men who are ready to ask, with an idle curiosity, with an interest too superficial to wait for an answer, this question, "What is truth?" There are always those who are ready to ask it, with a saddened or scornful skepticism, as quite sure there is no answer to be given; no truth; nothing but fancies, speculations, notions, opinions, fleeting, contradictory, and futile. And, thank God, there have always been men, like Jesus, who have seen the truth to be such an transcendent, vital, divine reality that they knew it to be a thing worth living, worth dying for. So Jesus could declare the truth to be, no fancy, no delusion, no mere opinion or speculation, but that thing to bear witness to which was the one purpose of his existence, the thing for which he was born.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
"Truth"
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
Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
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
Man is here to search for truth, and to search until he finds it. And he will enjoy it all the more that he has had to search for it.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
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
There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
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
You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions