quotations about truth
Serious misfortunes, originating in misrepresentation, frequently flow and spread before they can be dissipated by truth.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Jay, May 8, 1796
Truth sometimes tastes like medicine, but that is an evidence that we are ill.
JOSEPH VON METZ
attributed, Day's Collacon
It's heartwarming that The New York Times and The Washington Post are troubled that President Trump is loosely throwing around accusations of "fake news." It's nice that they now realize that truth does not reliably come from the mouth of every senior government official or from every official report.
ROBERT PARRY
"Mainstream Media's 'Victimhood'", Consortium News, February 28, 2017
If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
Lectures on Art and Poems
For simple are the words of truth.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Hoplon Krisis
If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Some sorts of truth are truer than others.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
The only time I see the truth is when I cross my eyes.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse
There is truth and falsehood in a comma.
TOM STOPPARD
The Invention of Love
Truth is a matter of the imagination. The soundest fact may fail or prevail in the style of its telling: like that singular organic jewel of our seas, which grows brighter as one woman wears it and, worn by another, dulls and goes to dust.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.
ADRIENNE RICH
On Lies, Secrets, and Silence
Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.
ARIANA FRANKLIN
Mistress of the Art of Death
You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth is not simply what is believed. A lie believed is still a lie.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
The temple of truth is built indeed of stones of crystal, but, inasmuch as men have been concerned in rearing it, it has been consolidated by a cement composed of baser materials.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Truth is the right hand of God.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.
ELIF BATUMAN
The Possessed
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
letter, September 6, 1955
If any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.
HENRY MILLER
Tropic of Cancer
Truth is too precious a commodity to be wasted upon mere idolators.
HERNANDEZ CORTEZ
attributed, Day's Collacon