quotations about truth
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Our mind is dreadfully active sometimes, and the other day we began to speculate on Truth. Our friends are still avoiding us. Every man knows what Truth is, but it is impossible to utter it. The face of your listener, his eyes mirthful or sorry, his eager expectance or his churlish disdain insensibly distort your message. You find yourself saying what you know he expects you to say, or (more often) what he expects you not to say. You may not be aware of this, but that is what happens. In order that the world may go on and human beings thrive, nature has contrived that the Truth may not often be uttered.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Notes on Virginia
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.
ANN PATCHETT
Truth and Beauty
Truth is more deceptive than falsehood, for it is more frequently presented by those from whom we do not expect it, and so has against it a numerical presumption.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth -- and truth rewarded me.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
All Said and Done
Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook C", Aphorisms
Trump's relationship to the truth seems novel, if only because he doesn't try to hide his relativism. For Trump, truth is always more about how people feel than what may be empirically verifiable. Trump admits as much in The Art of the Deal, where he describes his sales strategy as "truthful hyperbole." For Trump, facts are fragile, and truth is flexible. Trump probably doesn't spend evenings poring over Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge -- but the parallels between Trump's attacks on accepted knowledge and critical philosophy's insistence that we interrogate truth claims suggest that not all assaults on the authority of facts are revolutionary.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, "The fit is momentary."
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
The Fool's Song
The truth has no need to be uttered to be made apparent, and ... one may perhaps gather it with more certainty, without waiting for words and without even taking any account of them, from countless outward signs, even from certain invisible phenomena, analogous in the sphere of human character to what atmospheric changes are in the physical world.
MARCEL PROUST
The Guermantes Way
An adherence to truth, open and without reservation, has, from the age of chivalry downwards, been considered as one of the loftiest attributes of a "gentleman"; so much so, that, to brand as "a liar" the pretender to such a title, is one of the most deadly insults that you can offer him.
CHARLES WILLIAM DAY
The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos
I am sure, zeal or love for truth can never permit falsehood to be used in the defence of it.
JOHN LOCKE
The Reasonableness of Christianity
Slender certainty is better than portentous falsehood.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Truth ... is a hard apple, whether one is throwing it or catching it.
DONALD BARTHELME
"Rebecca"
Truth is too precious a commodity to be wasted upon mere idolators.
HERNANDEZ CORTEZ
attributed, Day's Collacon