quotations about truth
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Let us not expect men to see truth before it is shown them; they do not see it afterwards.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
One reason, I verily believe, why many are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth is, that they have no set intent and purpose to use truth--to make it practical and operative.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
We're told that we're living in a post-truth (or post-factual) era, a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, a culture that eschews a foundation of solid facts. Indeed, it is said that in this post-truth time, facts have become "secondary" if not entirely irrelevant. But who gets stuck with this "post-truth" label -- and it is typically used as an insult -- is not so simple.
GILBERT DOCTOROW
"Complexities of a 'Post-Truth' Era", Consortium News, May 11, 2017
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.
GAO XINGJIAN
"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium
Truth makes all things plain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Night's Dream
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Whatever of truth or approximation to truth we have attained, we must hold to it with tenacity and assurance as the truth for us and for the time; must hold to it to live and die by. It seems to me that this fidelity to the conviction of the hour, truth will not dispense with. If a man holds faintly and indecisively to what of truth he has attained, I do not see how he can gain any more beyond. Nevertheless, we must hold it in readiness to give it up the hour that a new or larger truth is revealed. For truth in our minds, our vision of it, is not a finality, but a march. And the moment the word is given, we must strike our tent, without a sigh.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections