quotations about truth
If a man lived in a desert for six months without food, drink or companionship he would be reasonably free from prejudice and would be in a condition to enunciate great truths. But even then his vision of reality would have been warped by so much sand and so many sunsets. Even if he survived and brought us his Truth with all the gravity and long night-gown of a Hindu faker, as soon as any one listened to him his message would no longer be Truth. The complexion of his audience, the very shape of their noses, would subtly undermine his magnificent aloofness.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
The truth can only be recalled, never invented.
MARILYN MONROE
diary, Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters
Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
L'Envoi
He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
DANIEL DEFOE
The History of the Union Between England and Scotland
Nature has completely hid truth in the bottom of a well.
DEMOCRITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Young India 1924-1926
Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
The truth of the scholar, alone in his study, does not always accord with what the world at large considers to be true.
EIJI YOSHIKAWA
Musashi
Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Basic Education
Truth shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused.
JOHN WYCLIFFE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Will you tell me how a man's to live, and face his life, if he can't believe that truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen though it takes all the years there are? While I stand up and have breath in my lungs I shall be one flame of that fire; it's all the life I have.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Human truth is always soiled with falsehood.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, October 30, 1703
Truth doesn't run on time like a commuter train.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion