Quotes about truth

The greatest homage we can pay truth is to use it.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every mind has a choice between truth and repose. Take which you please you can never have both.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All necessary truth is its own evidence.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever separates you from the Truth, throw it away, it will vanish anyhow.

— Yumus Emre

A man that seeks truth and loves it must be reckoned precious to any human society.

— Epictetus

The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

— Epictetus

The ultimate aim of the human mind, in all its efforts, is to become acquainted with Truth.

— Eliza Farnham

If I had my hand full of truth, I would take good care how I opened it.

— Bernard Le Bovier Fontenelle

The truth is always the strongest argument. Sophocles Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.

— (Frederick II) Frederick The Great

From error to error, one discovers the entire truth.

— Sigmund Freud

The truth simply is that's all. It doesn't need reasons: it doesn't have to be right: it's just the truth. Period.

— Frederick (Carl) Frieseke

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough and... it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

— Robert Frost

Men in earnest have no time to waste in patching fig leaves for the naked truth.

— Max Fuller

Craft must have clothes, but truth loves to go naked.

— Thomas Fuller

Seeing is believing, but feeling's the truth.

— Thomas Fuller

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.

— Mahatma Gandhi

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent.

— Mahatma Gandhi

There is no god higher than truth.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.

— Mahatma Gandhi

Funny how people despise platitudes, when they are usually the truest thing going. A thing has to be pretty true before it gets to be a platitude.

— Katherine F. Gerould

Say not, I have found the truth, but rather, I have found a truth.

— Kahlil Gibran

Believe those who are seeking truth, doubt those who find it.

— Andre Gide

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

I want everyone to tell me the truth, even if it costs him his job.

— Samuel Goldwyn

I don't want yes men around me. I want everyone to tell the truth, even if it costs them their jobs.

— Samuel Goldwyn

Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

— Nadine Gordimer

What is, is; and what ain't, ain't

— Joseph E. Granville

You ought to be true for the sake of the folks who think you are true. You never should stoop to a deed that your folks think you would not do. If you are false to yourself, be the blemish but small, you have injured your folks; you have been false to them all.

— Edgar A. Guest

Truth is not determined by majority vote.

— Doug Gwyn

True merit is like a river, the deeper it is, the less noise it makes.

— Edward F. Halifax

Effective thinking consists of being able to arrive at the truth; truth being defined as that which exists.

— Calvin S. Hall

Truth is like a torch; the more it is shook it shines.

— Sir William Hamilton

The greatest truths are the simplest, and so are the greatest men.

— J. C. Hare

The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public, he offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin -- and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost.

— Vaclav Havel

I'm going to speak my mind because I have nothing to lose.

— S. I. Hayakawa

Truth is a torch that shines through the fog without dispelling it.

— Claude A. Helvetius

I know now that there is no one thing that is true -- it is all true.

— Ernest Hemingway

There's no one thing that is true. They're all true.

— Ernest Hemingway

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.

— Frank Herbert

We know how to speak many falsehoods that resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.

— Hesiod

The truth is lived, not taught.

— Hermann Hesse

The truth has a million faces, but there is only one truth.

— Hermann Hesse

All great truths are simple in final analysis, and easily understood; if they are not, they are not great truths.

— Napoleon Hill

Your real boss is the one who walks around under your hat.

— Napoleon Hill

A new untruth is better than an old truth.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Rough work, iconoclasm, but the only way to get at truth.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

Truth is not a matter of personal viewpoint.

— Vernon Howard

Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.

— Vernon Howard

Many people would be more truthful were it not for their uncontrollable desire to talk.

— Edgar Watson Howe

The wise boldly pick up a truth as soon as they hear it. Don't wait or a moment, or you'll lose your head.

— Hsueh-Dou

Live truth instead of professing it.

— Elbert Hubbard

We should face reality and our past mistakes in an honest, adult way. Boasting of glory does not make glory, and singing in the dark does not dispel fear.

— King Hussein

Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.

— Aldous Huxley

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

— Aldous Huxley

It is the fate of new truths to begin as heresies and end and superstitions.

— Thomas H. Huxley

Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

— Thomas H. Huxley

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

— William James

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead...

— Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

— Thomas Jefferson

The man who fears no truth has nothing to fear from lies.

— Thomas Jefferson

In this world truth can wait; she is used to it.

— Douglas William Jerrold

What is true by lamplight is not always true by sunlight.

— Joseph Joubert

What the imagination seizes as beauty must be the truth.

— John Keats

No matter what you believe, it doesn't change the facts.

— Al Kersha

A hair divides what is false and true.

— Omar Khayyam

The teller of a mirthful tale has latitude allowed him. We are content with less than absolute truth.

— Charles Lamb

Never lie when the truth is more profitable.

— Stanislaw J. Lec

All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

— Bruce Lee

There's nothing you can know that isn't known.

— John Lennon

The fundamental laws are in the long run merely statements that every event is itself and not some different event.

— C. S. Lewis

Receiving a new truth is like adding a new sense.

— Liebig

Let the people know the truth and the country is safe.

— Abraham Lincoln

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed but I am bound to live the best life that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right and part from him when he goes wrong.

— Abraham Lincoln

Duration is not a test of truth or falsehood.

— Anne Morrow Lindbergh

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

— John Locke

The criterion of simplicity requires that the minimum number of assumptions be postulated.

— Albert Low

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it Confucius All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, but he who keeps back truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal.

— James Russell Lowell

Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne.

— James Russell Lowell

Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed.

— James Russell Lowell

Superstition, idolatry and hypocrisy have ample wages, but the truth goes begging.

— Martin Luther

Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.

— Martin Luther

The true snob never rests: there is always a higher goal to attain, and there are, by the same token, always more and more people to look down upon.

— Russell Lynes

Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or who says it.

— Malcolm X

We do not condemn the preachers as an individual but we condemn what they teach. We urge that the preachers teach the truth, to teach our people the one important guiding rule of conduct -- unity of purpose.

— Malcolm X

Always tell the truth -- it's the easiest thing to remember.

— David Mamet

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

— Horace Mann

Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise.

— Horace Mann

Truth uttered before its time is dangerous.

— Mencius (Mengzi Meng-tse)

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

— H. L. Mencken

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

— H. L. Mencken

We spend all our time looking for some concept of Truth, but Truth is what is left when we drop all concepts.

— David Merzel

Truth is not beautiful, neither is ugly, Why should it be either? Truth is Truth.

— Owen C. Middleton

The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.

— John Stuart Mill

I tell the truth, not as much as I would like to, but as much as I dare. I dare more and more as I grow older.

— Michel Eyquem De Montaigne

No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.

— John Pierpont Morgan

Truth and virtue conquer.

— Motto

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.

— Edward R. Murrow

The more abstract the truth you want to teach, the more thoroughly you must seduce the senses to accept it.

— Friedrich Nietzsche