quotations about truth
Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to seek the truth, but already to possess it.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
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Above the Battle
Human truth is always soiled with falsehood.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
WILL ROGERS
The Illiterate Digest
Things we wish to be true are apt to gain too ready credit with us.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Pamela
Truths are first clouds, then rain, then harvests and food.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
In your admiration for truth do not forget that truth can sometimes be as foul as a lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, October 30, 1703
Truth is always unfolding. It's not an absolute.
ALAN ARKIN
Esquire, March 2007
Truth is the one thing in nature always consistent with itself, and it is the one guide given to us in steering on the ocean of fate.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Truth is truth, though from an enemy, and spoken in malice.
GEORGE LILLO
George Barnwell; or, the London Merchant
If we think we have found truth for ourselves, above all things, let us not impose it on one another. Let us lock upon it all the doors of consciousness. For however inspiring it may be to us, however ennobling, when once we try to impose it on another it becomes a poison.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"Truth", Intimations
It is better by assenting to truth to conquer opinion, than by assenting to opinion to be conquered by truth.
EPICTETUS
Fragments
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
We are not, however, to judge of a truth beforehand by the fruit which we think it will produce. It is the truth which makes free, not any kind of error. It is the truth which sanctifies men, not any kind of falsehood. All truth is safe. All error is dangerous. It is only the truth that the minister is to use. He is never to say, "This is the philosophy that my people are used to and this is the philosophy that I think will do better service, and so, though I do not believe it, I will preach it." Never! It is only the truth he is to use, but he is always to use the truth. Truth is always an instrument.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
And the truth is cold, as a giant's knee
Will seem cold.
JOHN ASHBERY
"A Last World"
If I hear the way of truth in the morning, I am content even to die in the evening.
CONFUCIUS
The Analects
The most effectual method of expelling error, is, not to meet it sword in hand, but gradually to instill great truths, with which it cannot easily coexist.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
The truth
Has to be melted out of our stubborn lives
By suffering.
Nothing speaks the truth,
Nothing tells us how things really are,
Nothing forces us to know
What we do not want to know
Except pain.
And this is how the gods declare their love.
AESCHYLUS
The Oresteia
There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.
PHILIP ROTH
The Human Stain
Truth ...
Is a breath, a wind,
A shadow, a phantom;
Long have I pursued it,
But never have I touched
The hem of its garment.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Black Riders and Other Lines