quotations about truth
Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/t/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
When Nietzsche Wept
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
GRAHAM GREENE
Travels with My Aunt
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Truth cannot contradict truth.
POPE LEO X
Papal bull condemning every proposition contrary to the truth of the enlightened Christian faith, Apostolici Regiminis, December 19, 1513
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Annajanska
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Iceman Cometh
So stands Truth before worshipping man; and so she speaks to him. Truth shrouded in mystery; clothed in light; transcending our power to look upon her full and ample proportions. No man has seen her altogether as she is. Yet many a soul, gazing earnestly, reverently, has beheld the outlines; caught here and there a lineament, a feature; has seen that, when the veil has for a moment been parted, which has excited and enraptured him, and of which he has sought to speak to others. And they have, perhaps gladly, perhaps incredulously, listened to his report. No one has ever seen the whole of Truth. And because of that, and of the imperfection of the eyes which have looked, and of the words in which they have reported, the fragmentary reports men have brought back of what they have seen have been so various and seemed so contradictory. But it does not follow, because human philosophies, sciences, theologies, which are these reports, have been so various and fleeting--it does not follow that there is no reality; but only that men have had imperfect and fragmentary vision of the reality; and made imperfect and fragmentary report of it.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
"Truth"
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Non-Violence in Peace and War
No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The truth ... is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution.
J. K. ROWLING
The Sorcerer's Stone
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Little Foxes
All things to all men only fools will tell,
Truth profits none but those that use it well.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Wise Men of Greece: In a Series of Dramatic Dialogues
No two things can be so contradictory, so much at variance as truth and falsehood; and yet none are so mixed and united.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Even a liar tells a hundred truths to one lie; he has to, to make the lie good for anything.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN
attributed, The New Intimacy
Truth is beauty. That can be a hard thing to say, because some things are not so attractive on the surface. But by owning up to them, we change them--just by speaking them.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004
He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
DANIEL DEFOE
The History of the Union Between England and Scotland
Sometimes ... the truth isn't good enough. Sometimes people deserve more. Sometimes people deserve to have their faith rewarded.
CHRISTOPHER NOLAN
The Dark Knight
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."
STEPHEN CRANE
"The Wayfarer"