quotations about truth
You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
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
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
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
REBECCA WEST
The Meaning of Treason
The truth is never dangerous. Except when told.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
OSCAR WILDE
The Critic as Artist
Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Condemn not truth for error's deeds.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Flowers and Weeds"
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, May 8, 1796
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
One truth a man lives is worth a thousand he only utters.
EPICHARMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
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
Although the truth is not always pleasant, the truth is always a gift because it offers the recipient of that information the chance to change the outcome.
DENISE RESTAURI
"Four Words That Give This CEO The Courage To Take On The Beauty Industry", Forbes, December 8, 2016