quotations about truth
It is the way with half the truth amidst which we live, that it only haunts us and makes dull pulsations that are never born into sound.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
It might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of spirit should be measured according to how much of the "truth" one could still barely endure--or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Beyond Good and Evil
As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulent as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Education and time may improve and augment the uses of truth, but cannot alter the structure, which is ever the same--as proceeding from the Eternal.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Truth is the edict of God.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
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 always new, therefore timeless. What was truth yesterday is not truth today, what Truth is truth today is not truth tomorrow: truth has no continuity. It is the mind which wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind shall not know truth.
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
Arguably, this strategy is not viable beyond laboratory settings, because the truth is always unknown on the streets.
ANNA K. BOBAK
"Can We Improve National Security Using What We Know about Face Recognition?", Scientific American, April 18, 2017
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
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
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and of life.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
One truth a man lives is worth a thousand he only utters.
EPICHARMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon