quotations about truth
To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
Philosophical Occasions
There is often more truth in the censure of enemies than in the flattery of friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth
The force of truth that a statement imparts, then, its prominence among the hordes of recorded observations that I may optionally apply to my own life, depends, in addition to the sense that it is argumentatively defensible, on the sense that someone like me, and someone I like, whose voice is audible and who is at least notionally in the same room with me, does or can possibly hold it to be compellingly true.
NICHOLSON BAKER
U and I
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth, than to refine themselves.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
The Vital Illusion
One handles truths like dynamite.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
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
There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the best we can of them.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
Lucifer
The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
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
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Little Foxes
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"
In a free society, there comes a time when the truth -- however hard it may be to hear, however impolitic it may seem to say -- must be told.
AL GORE
fundraising letter, May 2006
I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out to be false?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
The truth is always the same ... and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish