quotations about truth
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
MAXIM GORKY
The Lower Depths
Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne--
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Present Crisis
To take thought, to take truth, and translate them into life--that is the hard, hard battle.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
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
Nothing endures except truth.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Veracity is not a stagnant feature of ideas, so the status of truth is always questionable.
TOMAS CHAMORRO-PREMUZIC
"Truth in the digital age: Blame people (not algorithms) for the filter bubble", Huffington Post, March 19, 2017
Truth and myth can be impossibly deviate, but frequently still have a common starting point.
MICK FARREN
Darklost
The excellence and inspiration of truth is in the pursuit, not in the mere having of it. The pursuit of all truth is a kind of gymnastics; a man swings from one truth with higher strength to gain another. The continual glory is the possibility opening before us.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
What shortens the life-span of the existing truth is the volume of hypotheses offered to replace it; the more the hypotheses, the shorter the time span of the truth.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
On Democracy
Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
GEORGE ELIOT
Armgart
Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Lila
My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
John Bull's Other Island
Whatever of truth or approximation to truth we have attained, we must hold to it with tenacity and assurance as the truth for us and for the time; must hold to it to live and die by. It seems to me that this fidelity to the conviction of the hour, truth will not dispense with. If a man holds faintly and indecisively to what of truth he has attained, I do not see how he can gain any more beyond. Nevertheless, we must hold it in readiness to give it up the hour that a new or larger truth is revealed. For truth in our minds, our vision of it, is not a finality, but a march. And the moment the word is given, we must strike our tent, without a sigh.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
No man is convinced of truth by another's falling into passion, but rather suspects error and design.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
Truth is the substance of the soul.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God.
ST. AUGUSTINE
De Libero Arbitrio