Truth
- Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others.--Fyodor Doestoyevsky (Brothers Karamazov)
- Adventure is something you seek for pleasure, or even for profit, like a gold rush or invading a country; ... but experience is what really happens to you in the long run; the truth that finally overtakes you.--Katherine Anne Porter
- Adversity is the first path to truth.--Lord Byron
- All great truths begin as blasphemies.--George Bernard Shaw
- All too often before truth sets you free it will make you miserable.–-Wayne Cordeiro
- As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.--Josh Billings
- The attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.--Alan Watts
- The best mind-altering drug is truth.--Lily Tomlin
- The cruelest lies are often told in silence.--Robert Louis Stevenson ("Virginibus Puerisque")
- Don't go for happiness, go for truth!--Charles Tart
- The elegance of honesty needs no adornment.--Merry Browne
- The enemies of the truth are always awfully nice.--Christopher Morley
- Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.--C. S. Lewis
- Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof.--John Kenneth Galbraith
- The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.--Utterly Russell
- Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.--Neil Gaiman (Coraline)
- First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.--Thomas Merton
- For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it.
For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it.
For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.--Ivan Panin
- God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them.--Khalil Gibran
- The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see truth in fragment and from different points of vision.--Mahatma Gandhi
- The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.--Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night)
- The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--diliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.--John Fitzgerald Kennedy
- The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.--Frederick II, the Great
- The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.--Charles Caleb Colton
- The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none. Recognizing our limitations and imperfections is the first requisite of progress. Those who believe they have "arrived" believe they have nowhere to go. Some not only have closed their minds to new truth, but they sit on the lid.--Dale Turner
- He who sees the truth, let him proclaim it, without asking who is for it or who is against it.--Henry George
- I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.--Peter Medawar
- I do not know what I appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on a seashore, and diverting myself now and then by finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.--Sir Issac Newton
- I never said it was possible. I only said it was true.--Charles Richet
- I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me.--Simone de Beauvoir
- If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.--Orville Wright
- If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.--Albert Einstein
- If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.--C. S. Lewis
- If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.--Rabindranath Tagore (Stray Birds)
- If you tell the truth, you don't need a long memory.--Jesse Ventura
- If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.--Mark Twain
- In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.--George Orwell
- In proportion as we perceive and embrace the truth do we become just, heroic, magnanimous, divine.--William Lloyd Garrison (Free Speech and Free Inquiry)
- In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.--John Lilly
- Infinite love is the only truth. Everything else is illusion.--David Icke
- Inquisitiveness and strength make me want to rise above my valley-bound brothers. I must reach the summit to see the truth.--Delores Seats
- It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.--A. A. Hodge
- It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.--Goethe
- It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.--Samuel Johnson (Boswells's Life of Johnson)
- It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.--Giordano Bruno
- It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.--Sidney Smith
- It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.--Henry David Thoreau
- It’s not about accepting some doctrine or dogma, it’s about realising truth; it’s not about believing, but about being and becoming.--Vivekananda (Swami)
- Keep the other person's well being in mind when you feel an attack of soul purging truth coming on.--Betty White
- Let my name stand among those who are willing to bear ridicule and reproach for the truth's sake, and so earn some right to rejoice when the victory is won.--Louisa May Alcott
- Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth--to see it like it is, and tell it like it is--to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.--Richard Nixon
- Lying is done with words and also with silence.--Adrienne Rich
- Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.--Kahlil Gibran
- Men occasionally stumble on the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.--Sir Winston Churchill
- The most dangerous of all falsehoods is a slightly distorted truth.--G. C. Lichtenberg
- The most useful piece of learning for the uses of life is to unlearn what it untrue.--Antisthenes
- No matter what you believe, it doesn't change the facts.--Al Kersha
- On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.--Friedrich Nietzsche
- One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.--Bertrand Russell
- Opinion is a flitting thing
But Truth outlasts the Sun.--Emily Dickinson
- The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.--Neils Bohr
- People hate the truth. Luckily, the truth doesn't care.--Larry Winget
- Political language ... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.--George Orwell
- The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they’ve found it.--Terry Pratchett (Monstrous Regiment)
- Science is not to be regarded merely as a storehouse of facts to be used for material purposes, but as one of the great human endeavors to be ranked with arts and religion as the guide and expression of man's fearless quest for truth.--Sir Richard Arman Gregory
- Science is the search for truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponents, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, nor the effort by each nation to get the better of other nations…--Linus Pauling (No More War)
- Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.--Horace Mann
- The shortest distance between a human being and Truth is a story.--Anthony de Mello (One Minute Wisdom)
- Sincerity is not a test of truth. We must not make this mistake: He must be right; he's so sincere. Because, it is possible to be sincerely wrong. We can only judge truth by truth and sincerity by sincerity.--Jim Rohn (Jim Rohn's Weekly E-zine - June 24, 2003)
- Speak the truth.
Give whatever you can.
Never be angry.
These three steps will lead you
Into the presence of the gods.--Buddha
- The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everybody should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.--Ram Dass
- The sword of Truth is a blunt instrument without the keen edge of Justice.--Michael Rawls
- Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
--Emily Dickinson
- Tell the truth so as to puzzle and confound your adversaries.--Henry Wotton
- Telling the truth ... is not solely a matter of moral character; it is also a matter of correct appreciation of real situations and of serious reflection upon them.--Dietrich Bonhoeffer
- There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.--John Stuart Mill
- There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.--Buddha
- There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth, because its opposite is falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another great truth.--Niels Bohr
- There are two sides to every story and TRUTH lays somewhere in the middle.--Jean Gati (from The Quotable Teacher, comp. by Howe)
- There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.--Leo Tolstoy
- There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.--Maya Angelou (I Dream a World by Lanker)
- A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.--St. Augustine of Hippo
- Time, whose tooth gnaws away at everything else, is powerless against the truth.--Thomas Huxley
- To be persuasive, one must be believable.
To be believable, we must be credible.
To be credible, we must be truthful.--Edward R. Murrow
- Too often in the past our approach to truth has been to assume that we have it and others do not. Consequently, we have thought that our role is to tell people what to believe. We are being invited instead into a new humility, to serve the holy wisdom that is already stirring in the hearts of people everywhere...--John Philip Newell (The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings)
- The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.--Dame Rebecca West
- True religion is not about possessing the truth. No religion does that. It is rather an invitation into a journey that leads one toward the mystery of God. Idolatry is religion pretending that it has all the answers.--John Shelby Spong ("Q&A on The Parliament of the World's Religions," Sept. 5, 2007)
- The truth comes out in jokes.--Vicki Marsala
- Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.--Georges Braque (Pensées sur l'Art)
- Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now--always.--Albert Schweitzer
- Truth is always elusive. I know that I must remain vulnerable, detached from the outcome, and allow my many voices to speak of endless layers of meaning. ... It is this elusiveness of truth that keeps me seeking.--Dottie Moore
- The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.--Pearl S. Buck
- The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.--George Santayana
- Truth is eternal. Our knowledge of it is changeable. It is disastrous when you confuse the two.-—Madeleine L’Engle
- Truth is one forever absolute, but opinion is truth filtered through the moods, the blood, the disposition of the spectator.--Wendell Phillips (Idols)
- The truth is not always the same as the majority decision.--Pope Jean Paul
- Truth is simple, requiring neither study nor art.—Ammian
- Truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.--Elizabeth Cady Stanton (The Woman's Bible)
- Truth is violated by falsehood, but outraged by silence.--Anonymous
- Truth is what stands the test of experience.--Albert Einstein (Out of my Later Years)
- Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.--Leo Tolstoy
- Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as does oil above water.--Miguel de Cervantes
- Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.--William Penn
- Truth replies only when first hearing sincere questions, and how few it hears.--Vernon Howard
- Truth, though it has many disadvantages, is at least changeless. You can always find it where you left it.--Phyllis Bottome (Under the Skin)
- Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.--W. Clement Stone
- Try to remain truthful. The power of truth never declines. Force and violence may be effective in the short term, but in the long run it’s truth that prevails. --Dalai Lama
- Unless your heart, your soul, and your whole being are behind every decision you make, the words from your mouth will be empty, and each action will be meaningless. Truth and confidence are the roots of happiness.--Kathleen Pedersen
- Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.--Albert Einstein
- We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.--John F. Kennedy
- We too often bind ourselves by authorities rather than by the truth.--Lucretia Mott
- What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.--Boris Pasternak
- What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.--Warren Bennis
- What upsets me is not that you lied to me, but that from now on I can no longer believe you.--Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
- What would happen in one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open.--Muriel Rukeseyer ("Kathe Kollwitz")
- When I despair, I remember that all through history, the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it. Always.--Mahatma Gandhi
- When we really live truth, we will cease to talk about it.--Elbert Hubbard (in An American Bible comp. By Alice Hubbard)
- When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbably, must be the truth.--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four)
- Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.--Mahatma Gandhi
- Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.--Albert Einstein
- You needn't think there is nothing you can do--you can tell the truth.--Daniel Ellsberg ("Awakening From a Dream of Kings and Wizards" in Peace is the Way)
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