quotations about truth
Just think, reader, what will happen to you if the truth of a mad beast overpowers the sane truth of man?
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
Condemn not truth for error's deeds.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Flowers and Weeds"
When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, May 8, 1796
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
When we walk towards the sun of Truth, all shadows are cast behind us.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
There's many a true word spoken in jest.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Although the truth is not always pleasant, the truth is always a gift because it offers the recipient of that information the chance to change the outcome.
DENISE RESTAURI
"Four Words That Give This CEO The Courage To Take On The Beauty Industry", Forbes, December 8, 2016
Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
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
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Some that will hold a creed unto martyrdom will not hold the truth against a sneering laugh.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth is never dangerous. Except when told.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.
REBECCA WEST
The Meaning of Treason
The very truth hath a colour from the disposition of the utterer.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
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
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"University Education", Fact and Fiction
Truth is so good a thing that falsehood can not afford to be without it.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Tractacus Logico-Philosophicus
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