quotations about truth
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
"Truth will prevail." It may be true; but some people, I believe, think her a very slow worker; and little will the satisfaction of her prevailing be to you, if you happen to be ruined in your reputation or fortune while she is at work.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum
To a new truth there is nothing more hurtful than an old error.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Supreme truths are the foundation on which repose the state of human society.
POPE LEO XIII
attributed, Day's Collacon
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The truth is always on trial.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
The fact is, all people have a bias of some sort or another. It cannot be helped. All human beings are inculcated with it through their families, friends, culture, education, economic status, and a variety of factors in life. A search for truth is always done by a person, or persons, who are biased in some way. The difficulty for the seeker of authenticity is not to somehow overcome one's biases. The test is when the seeker finds a fact, or data set, that incline against their prejudice. The challenge is to realize that what is real, in any particular case, should prevail over the bias.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
We may have revolved every possible idea in our minds, and yet the truth has never occurred to us, and it is from without, when we are least expecting it, that it gives us its cruel stab and wounds us forever.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
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
For truth has such a face and such a mien
As to be loved needs only to be seen.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
The truth--a hideous spectacle!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Penetrant"
You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
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
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear
In matter of fact, truth leaves a man at liberty to judge for himself, whilst falsehood, dreading the consequences of investigation, chooses to judge for him.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections