quotations about truth
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
THOMAS MANN
Essay on Freud
Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
On Democracy
To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Truth and myth can be impossibly deviate, but frequently still have a common starting point.
MICK FARREN
Darklost
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
CLARENCE DARROW
The Sign
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
It's strange how the human mind swings back and forth, from one extreme to another. Does truth lie at some point of the pendulum's swing, at a point where it never rests, not in the dull perpendicular mean where it dangles in the end like a windless flag, but at an angle, nearer one extreme than another? If only a miracle could stop the pendulum at an angle of sixty degrees, one would believe the truth was there.
GRAHAM GREENE
The End of the Affair
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Nothing endures except truth.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Lila
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
GEORGE ELIOT
Armgart
No man is convinced of truth by another's falling into passion, but rather suspects error and design.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Truth is the substance of the soul.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
To take thought, to take truth, and translate them into life--that is the hard, hard battle.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Daily News, February 25, 1905
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit