quotations about truth
Man is here to search for truth, and to search until he finds it. And he will enjoy it all the more that he has had to search for it.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
lecture at Workers' Educational Association, May 1940
The investigation of the truth is in one way hard, in another easy. An indication of this is found in the fact that no one is able to attain the truth adequately, while, on the other hand, no one fails entirely, but everyone says something true about the nature of all things, and while individually they contribute little or nothing to the truth, by the union of all a considerable amount is amassed.
ARISTOTLE
Metaphysics
Call it what you want: relativism, constructivism, deconstruction, postmodernism, critique. The idea is the same: Truth is not found, but made, and making truth means exercising power.
CASEY WILLIAMS
"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017
The truth--a hideous spectacle!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Penetrant"
Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people -- as may be noticed of most young children -- does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
DINAH CRAIK
A Woman's Thoughts About Women
Truth never was indebted to a lie.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
There is a deeper pleasure in following truth to the scaffold or the cross, than in joining the multitudinous retinue, and mingling our shouts with theirs, when victorious error celebrates its triumphs.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions
History, mythology, and folktales are filled with stories of people punished for saying the truth. Only the Fool, exempt from society's rules, is allowed to speak with complete freedom.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry
Truth is only a question of point of view.
KARL LAGERFELD
Vice Magazine, February 28, 2010
The most familiar precepts are not always the truest.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
NADINE GORDIMER
"A Bolter and the Invincible Summer"
One reason, I verily believe, why many are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth is, that they have no set intent and purpose to use truth--to make it practical and operative.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
Truth is always opposed to the destructiveness of deception, duplicity, and hypocrisy. Although deviances may have their moment, truth must be forever upheld, for in due time, it will have its victory.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch