quotations about truth
We are too small, all but a few of us, to hold more than a little of the truth.
JOHN C. BAILEY
The Claims of French Poetry
Each truth helps on the discovery of another.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Devotion to the truth is the hallmark of morality; there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
AYN RAND
Atlas Shrugged
I always tell the truth when I'm drunk. In vino vomitas.
GUY BELLAMY
The Man Who Won
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
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.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Nothing feels sexier than wearing the beautiful truth.
COURTNEY STODDEN
Twitter post, October 6, 2011
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Nootbook
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth
Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! we ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts.
LT. FRANK DREBIN (LESLIE NIELSEN)
Naked Gun 2 1/2
Half the Truth is often a great Lie.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1758
Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth?
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The New England Tragedies
If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.
FRANCES WRIGHT
Course of Popular Lectures
I am quite prepared to admit that being habitual liars and self-deluders, we have good cause to fear the truth, but I'm not at all ready to stop hoping. There may be some truths that are, after all, our friends in the universe.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1870
For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music