quotations about truth
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Each truth helps on the discovery of another.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
If you want to see the truth, you must be brave enough to look.
RUNE LAZULI
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Nootbook
Truth at last cannot be hidden. Dissimulation is of no avail. Dissimulation is to no purpose before so great a judge. Falsehood puts on a mask. Nothing is hidden under the sun.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
Who dares to say that he alone has found the truth?
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The New England Tragedies
For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we chose to distort it.
WOODY ALLEN
Deconstructing Harry
How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be when there's no help in truth!
SOPHOCLES
Oedipus Rex
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, 1870
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Truth is the bread of a noble manhood.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
For the artist, the goal of the painting or musical composition is not to convey literal truth, but an aspect of a universal truth that if successful, will continue to move and to touch people even as contexts, societies and cultures change. For the scientist, the goal of a theory is to convey "truth for now"--to replace an old truth, while accepting that someday this theory, too, will be replaced by a new "truth," because that is the way science advances.
DANIEL J. LEVITIN
This Is Your Brain on Music
When the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be their yet.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
No Country for Old Men
I am quite prepared to admit that being habitual liars and self-deluders, we have good cause to fear the truth, but I'm not at all ready to stop hoping. There may be some truths that are, after all, our friends in the universe.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
Hide what you have to hide
And tell what you have to tell
You'll see your problems multiplied
If you continually decide
To faithfully pursue
The policy of truth
DEPECHE MODE
"Policy of Truth"