quotations about truth
Personally, I don't give a rap for documents; for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
It Is So! (If You Think So)
The truth ... is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution.
J. K. ROWLING
The Sorcerer's Stone
There are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
Truth shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused.
JOHN WYCLIFFE
attributed, Day's Collacon
And diff'ring judgments serve but to declare
That truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth is a moral requirement for society, and offenses against honesty, by word or action, are violations against character, ethics, and moral decency.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Nature has completely hid truth in the bottom of a well.
DEMOCRITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Some truths may be proclaimed upon the housetop; others may be spoken by the fireside; still others must be whispered in the ear of a friend.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
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
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
ANAÏS NIN
diary, Fall 1943
Truth is beauty. That can be a hard thing to say, because some things are not so attractive on the surface. But by owning up to them, we change them--just by speaking them.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004