quotations about truth
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
I do not think that so much harm is done by giving error to a child, as by giving truth in a lifeless form.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Nun of Nidaros", Tales of a Wayside Inn
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method
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"
Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying is thither in a straight line.
JOHN TILLOTSON
The Works of the Most Reverend John Tillotson, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Like the gush of the morning light, truth must go forward.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn't make it worse to have it said out loud.
STEPHENIE MEYER
The Host
The demands of Truth are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Poetic Principle"
The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.--Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius.
JOHANN CASPAR LAVATER
Aphorisms on Man
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Truth is within ourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
Truth, to my mind, beats fiction for dramatic interest.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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
All men need truth as they need water; if wise men are as high grounds where the springs rise, ordinary men are the lower grounds which their waters nourish.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes
That look on it! the diverse things they see!
GEORGE MEREDITH
"A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt"
For decades, critical social scientists and humanists have chipped away at the idea of truth. We've deconstructed facts, insisted that knowledge is situated and denied the existence of objectivity. The bedrock claim of critical philosophy, going back to Kant, is simple: We can never have certain knowledge about the world in its entirety. Claiming to know the truth is therefore a kind of assertion of power.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017