quotations about truth
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Journal of Arnold Bennett
Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.
GRAHAM GREENE
Travels with My Aunt
You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all. But let all you tell be truth.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Every person must choose how much truth he can stand.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping.
NICHOLAS BLACK ELK
Black Elk Speaks
For behold, Thou lovest the truth, and he that doth it, cometh to the light.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Truth is a gem which will only reflect the rays that come direct from heaven.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it seems to me the deepest root of all evil that is in the world.
MAX BORN
attributed, The New Intimacy
There is often more truth in the censure of enemies than in the flattery of friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
I would then like to know how it comes about that when each piece of a story is true, the whole story turns out to be false?
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
debate with Stephen Douglas, September 18, 1858
In a free society, there comes a time when the truth -- however hard it may be to hear, however impolitic it may seem to say -- must be told.
AL GORE
fundraising letter, May 2006
One handles truths like dynamite.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
Those only who can bear the truth will hear it.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
There is no room for absolute truth upon any subject whatsoever, in a world as finite and conditioned as man is himself. But there are relative truths, and we have to make the best we can of them.
HELENA PETROVNA BLAVATSKY
Lucifer
Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
The Little Foxes
The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."
STEPHEN CRANE
"The Wayfarer"
If you can't tell the truth to the people you care about the most, eventually you stop being able to tell the truth to yourself.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Ashes
Since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
The Vital Illusion