quotations about truth
All men need truth as they need water; if wise men are as high grounds where the springs rise, ordinary men are the lower grounds which their waters nourish.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Truth shall fear no open shame.
ANNE BOLEYN
attributed, Day's Collacon
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
It is much easier to recognize error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to everyone.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Physics, God, and the End of the World
Truth is new, as well as old. It has new forms; and where you may find a new statement, an earnest statement, you may conclude that by the law of progress it is more likely to be a correct statement than that which has been repeated for ages by the lips of tradition.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The fact is, all people have a bias of some sort or another. It cannot be helped. All human beings are inculcated with it through their families, friends, culture, education, economic status, and a variety of factors in life. A search for truth is always done by a person, or persons, who are biased in some way. The difficulty for the seeker of authenticity is not to somehow overcome one's biases. The test is when the seeker finds a fact, or data set, that incline against their prejudice. The challenge is to realize that what is real, in any particular case, should prevail over the bias.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"A Liberal Decalogue", New York Times Magazine, December 16, 1951
But O the truth, the truth! the many eyes
That look on it! the diverse things they see!
GEORGE MEREDITH
"A Ballad of Fair Ladies in Revolt"
You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird
Truth often spoils the dinner.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Every man can have his own peculiar truth; and yet it is always the same.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
So multifarious are the different classes of truths, and so multitudinous the truths in each class, that it may be undoubtingly affirmed that no man has yet lived who could so much as name all the different classes and subdivisions of truths, and far less anyone who was acquainted with all the truths belonging to any one class. What wonderful extent, what amazing variety, what collective magnificence! And if such be the number of truths pertaining to this tiny ball of earth, how must it be in the incomprehensible immensity!
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Man is here to search for truth, and to search until he finds it. And he will enjoy it all the more that he has had to search for it.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
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
Your anger and damage and grief are the way to the truth. We don't have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not go in to. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while, just breathing and finally taking it in -- then we will be able to speak in our own voice and to stay in the present moment. And that moment is home.
ANNE LAMOTT
Bird by Bird