quotations about truth
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
I do not think that so much harm is done by giving error to a child, as by giving truth in a lifeless form.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth -- and truth rewarded me.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
All Said and Done
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
"Stammbuch"
Lower a bucket into a well of self-deception, and what comes up must be immortal truth, mustn't it?
CHARLES READE
The Cloister and the Hearth
If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems
Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India, January 8, 1925
Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook C", Aphorisms
They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.
FANNY KEMBLE
Further Records, February 8, 1875
Truth is the right hand of God.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Thorough truthfulness--truthfulness to others and to ourselves--is a rare virtue; and he who indeed acts upon it is the noblest of all heroes.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs -- the truth from the beginning.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
Our mind is dreadfully active sometimes, and the other day we began to speculate on Truth. Our friends are still avoiding us. Every man knows what Truth is, but it is impossible to utter it. The face of your listener, his eyes mirthful or sorry, his eager expectance or his churlish disdain insensibly distort your message. You find yourself saying what you know he expects you to say, or (more often) what he expects you not to say. You may not be aware of this, but that is what happens. In order that the world may go on and human beings thrive, nature has contrived that the Truth may not often be uttered.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
In Quest of Democracy
Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
ANONYMOUS
For simple are the words of truth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Hoplon Krisis
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
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After