quotations about truth
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.
JOHN MILTON
Areopagitica
I've always been suspicious of collective truths. I think an idea is true when it hasn't been put into words and that the moment it's put into words it becomes exaggerated. Because the moment it's put into words there's an abuse, an excess in the expression of the idea that makes it false.
EUGENE IONESCO
Conversations with Eugene Ionesco
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
North and South
Arguably, this strategy is not viable beyond laboratory settings, because the truth is always unknown on the streets.
ANNA K. BOBAK
"Can We Improve National Security Using What We Know about Face Recognition?", Scientific American, April 18, 2017
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
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
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
The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Be Angry at the Sun"
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 travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
The Fool's Song
Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes--never!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Truth is a pillar erected by God, and upholdeth the universe.
JAMES LINEN
"Desultorious Chronicles", The Poetical and Prose Writings of James Linen
A half-truth does more mischief than a whole lie.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method
Trump's relationship to the truth seems novel, if only because he doesn't try to hide his relativism. For Trump, truth is always more about how people feel than what may be empirically verifiable. Trump admits as much in The Art of the Deal, where he describes his sales strategy as "truthful hyperbole." For Trump, facts are fragile, and truth is flexible. Trump probably doesn't spend evenings poring over Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge -- but the parallels between Trump's attacks on accepted knowledge and critical philosophy's insistence that we interrogate truth claims suggest that not all assaults on the authority of facts are revolutionary.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017