quotations about truth
As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event.
BROCK YATES
"Even the Cops Liked the Cannonball", Car and Driver, November 2002
Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.
DOROTHY CATHERINE FONTANA
"The Enterprise Incident", Star Trek
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916
Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don't have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in -- then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
THOMAS MANN
Essay on Freud
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
Veracity is not a stagnant feature of ideas, so the status of truth is always questionable.
TOMAS CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC
"Truth in the digital age: Blame people (not algorithms) for the filter bubble", Huffington Post, March 19, 2017
"Truth will prevail." It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Truth has a way of waiting for us to come forth and confess the lies of our lives. It has a way of gazing at us until we can bear the look of truth no longer.
MACRINA WIEDERKEHR
Seasons of Your Heart
We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
'Tis the glory of a man to vail to truth; as it is the mark of a good nature to be easily entreated.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
You touch on a disheartening truth. People never want to be told anything they do not believe already.
JAMES BRANCH CABELL
The Cream of the Jest
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness", The Varieties of Religious Experience