quotations about truth
Who make up the really great men of any age? It is those who have truth woven into every fiber of their being.
HENRY F. KLETZING
"Truth"
Men never make truths; they only recognize the value of this currency of God. They find truths, as men sometimes find bills, in the street, and only recognize the value of that which other persons have drawn.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
We cannot make things true by any amount of effort; we can merely discover what God has made true from all eternity.
HENRY WHITNEY BELLOWS
Re-statements of Christian Doctrine
Truth is that which is. It seems to me that the important thing is for the mind to be in a state when it can allow itself not to ask, not to demand, which does not mean acquiescence, acceptance, but that the mind is really silent.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
"What was true yesterday is not true today", The New Indian Express, March 2, 2017
Man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
JOHN LOCKE
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Condemn not truth for error's deeds.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Flowers and Weeds"
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
Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes--never!
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
PAUL FEYERABEND
Against Method
Truth is within ourselves.
ROBERT BROWNING
Paracelsus
O Truth, Truth, how inwardly did even then the marrow of my soul pant after Thee, when they often and diversely, and in many and huge books, echoed of Thee to me, though it was but an echo? And these were the dishes wherein to me, hungering after Thee, they, instead of Thee, served up the Sun and Moon, beautiful works of Thine, but yet Thy works, not Thyself, no nor Thy first works. For Thy spiritual works are before these corporeal works, celestial though they be, and shining. But I hungered and thirsted not even after those first works of Thine, but after Thee Thyself, the Truth, in whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: yet they still set before me in those dishes, glittering fantasies, than which better were it to love this very sun (which is real to our sight at least), than those fantasies which by our eyes deceive our mind. Yet because I thought them to be Thee, I fed thereon; not eagerly, for Thou didst not in them taste to me as Thou art; for Thou wast not these emptinesses, nor was I nourished by them, but exhausted rather.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
There must be repressed truth even in lies.
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ
The Madman and the Nun
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
letter to Elizabeth Pelham, January 4, 1939
I do not think that so much harm is done by giving error to a child, as by giving truth in a lifeless form.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
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
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Ideas and Opinions: Based on Mein Weltbild
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World
Every dogma embodies some shade of truth to give it seeming currency.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Truth is universal. Perception of truth is not.
ANONYMOUS
I see in the act of throwing the dice and of risking the affirmation of some intuitively felt truth, however uncertain, my whole reason for living.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings