quotations about truth
We grease the truth with rhyme.
NIK HOUSER
"A Beginner's Guide to Sandcastle Alchemy", Weird Tales, Summer 2011
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
I am quite prepared to admit that being habitual liars and self-deluders, we have good cause to fear the truth, but I'm not at all ready to stop hoping. There may be some truths that are, after all, our friends in the universe.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Annajanska
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
The greatest truths are the simplest.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The truth is always the same ... and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
We're not given the chance to choose absolute truth. Truth's always two-faced. The only thing we have is the right to reject the lie we find most repugnant.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Night Watch
There is an inherent and absolute authority in all truth, which makes it, in the end, unconquerable and victorious. The truth is mighty, and will prevail. What is founded on error, has rottenness for its corner-stone; and although it may temporarily be upheld by foreign aid, yet, deserted by its supporters, it always finally tumbles to the ground.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1870
I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out to be false?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth
You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.
NICHOLAS BLACK ELK
Black Elk Speaks
If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.
FRANCES WRIGHT
Course of Popular Lectures
We must not put Truth into the place of a means, but into the place of an end.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Non-Violence in Peace and War
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions