quotations about truth
The best way to deceive a knave is to tell him the truth.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!
WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS
The Fool's Song
Truth is within ourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
If the feeble mind of man did not presume to resist the clear evidence of truth, but yielded its infirmity to wholesome doctrines, as to a health-giving medicine, until it obtained from God, by its faith and piety, the grace needed to heal it, they who have just ideas, and express them in suitable language, would need to use no long discourse to refute the errors of empty conjecture. But this mental infirmity is now more prevalent and hurtful than ever, to such an extent that even after the truth has been as fully demonstrated as man can prove it to man, they hold for the very truth their own unreasonable fancies, either on account of their great blindness, which prevents them from seeing what is plainly set before them, or on account of their opinionative obstinacy, which prevents them from acknowledging the force of what they do see.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
Truth is that which is. It seems to me that the important thing is for the mind to be in a state when it can allow itself not to ask, not to demand, which does not mean acquiescence, acceptance, but that the mind is really silent.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
"What was true yesterday is not true today", The New Indian Express, March 2, 2017
The concept of truth has clearly fallen on hard times, and the consequences of rejecting it are ravaging human society. Falsehood is so appealingly packaged that without good knowledge of the truth, one could be misled and ensnared. However, acquaintance with the truth would help identify the length and breath of falsehood, unmask and demystify its attendant effect.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
Who make up the really great men of any age? It is those who have truth woven into every fiber of their being.
HENRY F. KLETZING
"Truth"
Truth is the edict of God.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
The demands of Truth are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Poetic Principle"
There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.
WILLIAM JAMES
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness", The Varieties of Religious Experience
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction ... for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
G. K. CHESTERTON
The Club of Queer Trades
We can, in general, be much less sure of the truth of a thing, than of the falsehood; because though every part we have seen may agree, yet we cannot tell how many may be behind, and one failure of connection will be sufficient to falsify the whole.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes--never!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Like the gush of the morning light, truth must go forward.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing.
BRUCE LEE
Tao of Jeet Kune Do
Though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licensing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength. Let her and Falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worse, in a free and open encounter.
JOHN MILTON
Areopagitica
We cannot make things true by any amount of effort; we can merely discover what God has made true from all eternity.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs -- the truth from the beginning.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women