quotations about truth
Truth shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused.
JOHN WYCLIFFE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Institutions such as schools, churches, governments and political organizations of every sort all tended to direct thought for ends other than truth, for the perpetuation of their own functions, and for the control of individuals in the service of these functions.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth ... is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution.
J. K. ROWLING
The Sorcerer's Stone
And diff'ring judgments serve but to declare
That truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.
WILLIAM COWPER
Hope
Personally, I don't give a rap for documents; for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
It Is So! (If You Think So)
Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Fall
The truth may often be carried about by those who themselves remain all unaware of it. They bear that which has weight and substance and yet for them has no name whereby it may be evoked or called forth. They go about ignorant of the true nature of their condition, such are the wiles of truth and such its stratagems.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
Truth is a moral requirement for society, and offenses against honesty, by word or action, are violations against character, ethics, and moral decency.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Nature has completely hid truth in the bottom of a well.
DEMOCRITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Some truths may be proclaimed upon the housetop; others may be spoken by the fireside; still others must be whispered in the ear of a friend.
ROSSITER JOHNSON
"The Whispering Gallery"
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
The truth of the scholar, alone in his study, does not always accord with what the world at large considers to be true.
EIJI YOSHIKAWA
Musashi
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.
ANAÏS NIN
diary, Fall 1943
Most people will accept a likely lie to an unlikely truth. In fact, they prefer it.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Guilty Pleasures
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
OSCAR WILDE
The Nightingale and the Rose