quotations about truth
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Give me truths;
For I am weary of the surfaces,
And die of inanition.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Blight
Nature expresses a design of love and truth.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Encyclical Letter, Caritas in Veritate, June 29, 2009
Truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favour.
POPE BENEDICT XVI
Address to the International Diplomats, March 18, 2006
One truth teacheth another.
SIR J. REYNOLDS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
"A Liberal Decalogue", New York Times Magazine, December 16, 1951
How wrong people always were when they said: 'It's better to know the worst than go on not knowing either way.' No; they had it exactly the wrong way round. Tell me the truth, doctor, I'd sooner know. But only if the truth is what I want to hear.
KINGSLEY AMIS
Lucky Jim
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
A half-truth does more mischief than a whole lie.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Truth is only a question of point of view.
KARL LAGERFELD
Vice Magazine, February 28, 2010
Still another condition of knowing the truth is, I think, the willingness to make some sacrifice for it.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
Stronger than steel is the sword of the Spirit;
Swifter than arrows, the light of the truth.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Nun of Nidaros", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Truth wears an unchanging countenance.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Truth often spoils the dinner.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
The strict conservative says that truth is in danger. It is the idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no intimacy with the truth. He who has communed with great principles knows that they are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them from their orbits. He is willing to trust truth in every encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omnipotent.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
The truth is never dangerous. Except when told.
PHILIP MOELLER
Helena's Husband
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
attributed, Physics, God, and the End of the World
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing