quotations about truth
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
Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts.
LT. FRANK DREBIN (LESLIE NIELSEN)
Naked Gun 2 1/2
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Annajanska
Since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
The Vital Illusion
For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
We must not put Truth into the place of a means, but into the place of an end.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
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
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
If man refused to believe those truths which were not made evident to his reason, he could not live among his fellows, nor could he make the slightest progress in civilization.
SABINE BARING-GOULD
The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
There are some things that can't be the truth even if they did happen.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
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
The Truth, with a capital T, is what ought to be. Not simply what was, or what is.
JENNIFER LEE CARRELL
Interred With Their Bones
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell
You'll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth
DEPECHE MODE
"Policy of Truth"
The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.
NICHOLSON BAKER
U and I
Those only who can bear the truth will hear it.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
There is often more truth in the censure of enemies than in the flattery of friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
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
The greatest truths are the simplest.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Truth cannot contradict truth.
POPE LEO X
Papal bull condemning every proposition contrary to the truth of the enlightened Christian faith, Apostolici Regiminis, December 19, 1513