quotations about truth
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916
Were truth our uttered language, Angels might talk with men.
GERALD MASSEY
"The World is Full of Beauty"
When the love of truth rules in the heart, the light of truth will guide the practice.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
When we are convinced of some great truths, and feel our convictions keenly, we must not fear to express it, although others have said it before us. Every thought is new when an author expresses it in a manner peculiar to himself.
LUC DE CLAPIERS, MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES
Reflections and Maxims
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
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
No point in ignoring the truth. Doesn't make it worse to have it said out loud.
STEPHENIE MEYER
The Host
There is no higher religion than the truth.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
The Essential Works of Helena Blavatsky
Truth is always opposed to the destructiveness of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Although deviances may have their moment, truth must be forever upheld, for in due time, it will have its victory.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
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
Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
We shall find some things that are true, and some that are new, but very few things that are both true and new.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there's truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it's gibberish and no truth to me, unless I know the meaning o' the words.
ELIZABETH GASKELL
North and South
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Blight
There are truths so prosaic, so dense, so dull, that one can hardly state them without suggesting the idea of something subtler or more interesting beyond.
LORD ACTON
letter to Mary Gladstone, June 9, 1880
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
To speak the truth is easy and pleasant.
MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Master and Margarita
Truth has her sterner responsibilities sooner or later in store for those who have known anything about her.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford
Truth is artless and innocent--like the eloquence of nature, it is clothed with simplicity and easy persuasion; always open to investigation and analysis, it seeks exposure, because it fears not detection.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections