quotations about truth
Our feelings often color the truth.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
The truth is always on trial.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
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
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
It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself.
DOROTHY CATHERINE FONTANA
"The Enterprise Incident", Star Trek
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
Kingdom of Fear
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
Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
CLARENCE DARROW
The Sign
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
The sun of truth strikes each part of the earth at a little different angle.
HAMLIN GARLAND
Crumbling Idols
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
'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
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
The truth is always multiplex.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Empire Star
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
Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.
MAXIM GORKY
The Lower Depths
Let us not expect men to see truth before it is shown them; they do not see it afterwards.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
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
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