TRUTH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about truth

Half truths were a wonderful way to inspire credibility.

DAVID BALDACCI

The Winner

Tags: David Baldacci


Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.

JOHN LOCKE

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

Tags: John Locke


When all is said and done, how do we know but that our own unreason may be better than another's truth? for it has been warmed on our hearths and in our souls, and is ready for the wild bees of truth to hive in it, and make their sweet honey.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

The Celtic Twilight

Tags: William Butler Yeats


If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Condemn not truth for error's deeds.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"Flowers and Weeds"

Tags: Martha Lavinia Hoffman


The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.

ROBINSON JEFFERS

"Be Angry at the Sun"

Tags: Robinson Jeffers


Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Brave New World

Tags: Aldous Huxley


I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.

ANN PATCHETT

Truth and Beauty

Tags: Ann Patchett


The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.

ADRIENNE RICH

On Lies, Secrets, and Silence

Tags: Adrienne Rich


Let us continue to improve until we are filled with the knowledge of the truth. We have yet much to learn.

BRIGHAM YOUNG

Journal of Discourses

Tags: Brigham Young


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


Truth is always new, therefore timeless. What was truth yesterday is not truth today, what Truth is truth today is not truth tomorrow: truth has no continuity. It is the mind which wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind shall not know truth.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

"What was true yesterday is not true today", The New Indian Express, March 2, 2017

Tags: Jiddu Krishnamurti


O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather.

ST. AUGUSTINE

Confessions

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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

Tags: John Milton


Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

ALBERT EINSTEIN

Ideas and Opinions: Based on Mein Weltbild

Tags: Albert Einstein


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

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The strict conservative says that truth is in danger. It is the idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no intimacy with the truth. He who has communed with great principles knows that they are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them from their orbits. He is willing to trust truth in every encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omnipotent.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


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

Tags: William E. Channing


Truth and eggs are useful only while they are fresh.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


Some that will hold a creed unto martyrdom will not hold the truth against a sneering laugh.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought