quotations about truth
The truth can both lift up and knock down.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Ever After
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
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken.
JANE AUSTEN
Emma
There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
We're told that we're living in a post-truth (or post-factual) era, a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, a culture that eschews a foundation of solid facts. Indeed, it is said that in this post-truth time, facts have become "secondary" if not entirely irrelevant. But who gets stuck with this "post-truth" label -- and it is typically used as an insult -- is not so simple.
GILBERT DOCTOROW
"Complexities of a 'Post-Truth' Era", Consortium News, May 11, 2017
Truth and virtue are flowers that die not.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth wears an unchanging countenance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Let us continue to improve until we are filled with the knowledge of the truth. We have yet much to learn.
BRIGHAM YOUNG
Journal of Discourses
As the snow before the sun, even so is a polished lie before the naked truth.
WILLIAM SCOTT DOWNEY
Proverbs
There are always men who are ready to ask, with an idle curiosity, with an interest too superficial to wait for an answer, this question, "What is truth?" There are always those who are ready to ask it, with a saddened or scornful skepticism, as quite sure there is no answer to be given; no truth; nothing but fancies, speculations, notions, opinions, fleeting, contradictory, and futile. And, thank God, there have always been men, like Jesus, who have seen the truth to be such an transcendent, vital, divine reality that they knew it to be a thing worth living, worth dying for. So Jesus could declare the truth to be, no fancy, no delusion, no mere opinion or speculation, but that thing to bear witness to which was the one purpose of his existence, the thing for which he was born.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
"Truth"
You're never going to see the truth. [It's] what you're shooting for always and you always miss it. Every once in a while, you catch an edge of it. That's what's you hope for, I think, as an artist.
SAM SHEPARD
interview, 2005
One reason, I verily believe, why many are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth is, that they have no set intent and purpose to use truth--to make it practical and operative.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Truth could be violent, could strip you of dignity and hope just as quickly as a gun.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
"Here Be Dragons"
It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.
JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI
Think on These Things
There is no higher religion than the truth.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
The Essential Works of Helena Blavatsky
Truth is the edict of God.
H. W. SHAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
No man rides so high and in such good company as the man that allies himself to a truth.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit