Truth Quotes

Do not believe in an absurdity no matter who says it.

The facts, although interesting, are irrelevant.

Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.

The book has never been written which is to be accepted without any allowance.

Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood - the virtues that made America.

Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never have happened and couldn't possibly have happened.

Sanity is not statistical.

Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

Because I have confidence in the power of truth, and of the spirit, I have confidence in the future of mankind.

Give to a gracious message An host of tongues, but let ill tidings tell Themselves when they be felt.

No one is so terribly deceived as he who does not himself suspect it.

We can't find the truth listening to our own voice's echo. We can find ourselves only in someone's mirror

What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me - that I understand. And these two certainties - my appetite for the absolute and for unity and the impossibility of reducing this world to a rational and reasonable principle - I also know that I cannot reconcile them. What other truth can I admit without lying, without bringing in a hope I lack and which means nothing within the limits of my conditions?

Because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false.

Truth has scarce done so much good in the world as the false appearances of it have done hurt.

But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best.

The inability to lie is far from the love of truth.

The only virtue I want to claim is truth and nonviolence.

I will spark a generation of thinkers who will question traditional thought until they find the absolute truth.

A totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy, and its ruling caste, in order to keep its position, has to be thought of as infallible. But since, in practice, no one is infallible, it is frequently necessary to rearrange past events in order to show that this or that mistake was not made, or that this or that imaginary triumph actually happened.

One is a majority if he is right.

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

If we live truly, we shall see truly.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

You shall not steal! You shall not kill! Such words were once called holy; before them people bowrd their knees and heads, and removed their shoes. But I ask you: where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all of life itself - robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself thereby - killed?

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

To experience a thing as beautiful means: to experience it necessarily wrongly.

If a man says that it is right to give every one his due, and therefore thinks within his own mind that injury is due from a just man to his enemies but kindness to his friends, he was not wise who said so, for he spoke not the truth, for in no case has it appeared to be just to injure any one.

It is a sad truth, but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things. Names are everything. I never quarrel with actions. My one quarrel is with words. The man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for.

There are two kinds of stories, the ones you live and the ones you make up. And nobody knows the difference, and I don't ever tell which is which.

The least deviation from truth will be multiplied later.

Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.

The lie, as a virtue, a principle, is eternal; the lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend is immortal

Romeo: I dreamt a dream tonight. Mercutio: And so did I. Romeo: Well, what was yours? Mercutio: That dreamers often lie. Romeo: In bed asleep while they do dream things true.

I gather, young man, that you wish to be a Member of Parliament. The first lesson that you must learn is, when I call for statistics about the rate of infant mortality, what I want is proof that fewer babies died when I was Prime Minister than when anyone else was Prime Minister. That is a political statistic.

The person of truth must be covered with bodyguards of lies.

No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions.

All truths are old, and all that we have to do is recognize and utter them anew.

Let us rejoice in the truth, wherever we find its lamp burning.

Some things ARE true, even though the party says they are true.

Customs and convictions change; respectable people are the last to know, or to admit, the change, and the ones most offended by fresh reflections of the facts in the mirror of art.

Strong and bitter words indicate a weak cause.

Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.

Our age is bent on trying to make the barren tree of skepticism fruitful by tying the fruits of truth on its branches.

Who are the true philosophers? Those whose passion is to love the truth.

No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.

This is enough was always true. We just haven't seen it.

It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means.

No doubt Carlyle has a propensity to exaggerate the heroic in history, that is, he creates you an ideal hero rather than another thing.... Yet what were history if he did not exaggerate it? How comes it that history never has to wait for facts, but for a man to write it? The ages may go on forgetting the facts never so long, he can remember two for every one forgotten. The musty records of history, like the catacombs, contain the perishable remains, but only in the breast of genius are embalmed the souls of heroes.

If the majority doesn't laugh at you, beware that you must be saying something wrong. When the majority thinks you are a fool, only then is there some possibility of you being a wise man.

Telling the truth is the funniest joke in the world.

Genteel women suppose that those things do not really exist about which it is impossible to talk in polite company.

It is like writing history with lightning and my only regret is that it is all so terribly true.

The qualities of number appear to lead to the apprehension of truth.

One never errs more safely than when one errs by too much loving the truth.

To the extent math refers to reality, we are not certain to the extent we are certain, math does not refer to reality.

Speak of me as I am. Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.