quotations about truth
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth had a nasty habit of biting people who refused to confront it.
DAVID WEBER
By Schism Rent Asunder
The river of truth is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between them, the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the mainstream.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Unquiet Grave
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear
Call it what you want: relativism, constructivism, deconstruction, postmodernism, critique. The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people -- as may be noticed of most young children -- does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts.... It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"The Book of the Grotesque", Winesburg, Ohio
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
CLARENCE DARROW
The Sign
'Tis the glory of a man to vail to truth; as it is the mark of a good nature to be easily entreated.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
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
He who clips away a little truth, and puts in a patch of falsehood to make measure, is likely to become a skilful manufacturer of lies.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not shew the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world, half so stately and daintily as candlelights.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Truth", Essays
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
MAXIM GORKY
The Lower Depths
The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Blind Assassin
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The sun of truth strikes each part of the earth at a little different angle.
HAMLIN GARLAND
Crumbling Idols
As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. But only when the reality has not been subsumed by foamy legends and fantasies that radiate outward from the actual event.
BROCK YATES
"Even the Cops Liked the Cannonball", Car and Driver, November 2002
Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.
GAO XINGJIAN
"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium