Quotes about truth

Mystical explanations are considered deep. The truth is that they are not even superficial.

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

— Anais Nin

Truth is a thing immortal and perpetual, and it gives to us a beauty that fades not away in time.

— Frank Norris

there is no such thing as a harmless truth.

— Gregory Nunn

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

— Austin O'Malley

Telling someone the truth is a loving act.

— Mal Pancoast

The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.

— Mal Pancoast

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

— Blaise Pascal

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

— William Penn

I pray without ceasing now. My personal prayer is: Make me an instrument which only truth can speak.

— Peace Pilgrim

Not every truth is the better for showing its face undisguised; and often silence is the wisest thing for a man to heed.

— Pindar

The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I'm looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling.

— Robert M. Pirsig

The solutions all are simple -- after you have arrived at them. But they're simple only when you know already what they are.

— Robert M. Pirsig

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.

— Max Planck

Truth is its own reward.

— Plato

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

— Plato

A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth.

— George D. Prentice

Time tries truth.

— Proverb

Tell the truth and then run.

— Proverb

Truth is the daughter of time.

— Proverb

Truth fears nothing but concealment.

— Proverb

Better suffer for the truth than proper in a falsehood.

— Danish Proverb

A truth spoken before its time is dangerous.

— Greek Proverb

It is the truth that irritates a person.

— Spanish Proverb

If you speak the truth, have a foot in the stirrup.

— Turkish Proverb

A half truth is a whole lie.

— Yiddish Proverb

The truth only irritates those it enlightens, but does not convert.

— Pasquier Quesnel

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

— Francois Rabelais

You'll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don't have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.

— Sam Rayburn

Truth makes many appeals, not the least of which is its power to shock.

— Jules Renard

Truth is reality.

— Mary Caroline Richards

Truth can be a dangerous thing. It is quite patient and relentless.

— R. Scott Richards

True, what you sacrifice for the world is but poorly recognized by it; for it is man that rules and reaps the harvest; the thousand night watches and sacrifices by which a mother secures the state a hero or a poet are forgotten, not even mentioned, for the mother herself does not mention them, and so one century after another do the wives, unknown and unrewarded send forth the arrows, the starts the storm-birds and the nightingales of time.

— Jean Paul Richter

People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.

— Robert J. Ringer

If you ever injected truth into politics you would have no politics.

— Will Rogers

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Are you going out after the truth, or are you going out after something you believe?

— Richard D. Rosen

Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.

— Jean Rostand

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

— Leo Rosten

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

There is no power on earth more formidable than the truth.

— Margaret Lee Runbeck

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

— Utterly Russell

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

— Sabbah

The basic truth of all things, as nearly as we may ever dream of determining and knowing this truth, is form, that which is, as it is. The way and shape of the thing no less than the thing itself.

— William Saroyan

Truth lives on in the midst of deception.

— Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self evident.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now -- always.

— Albert Schweitzer

The fact, if they are there, speak for themselves.

— David Seabury

What is true belongs to me!

— Seneca

The most natural beauty in the world is honesty and moral truth. For all beauty is truth. True features make the beauty of the face; true proportions, the beauty of architecture; true measures, the beauty of harmony and music.

— Lord Shaftesbury

While you live tell the truth and shame the devil.

— William Shakespeare

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.

— George Bernard Shaw

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

— George Bernard Shaw

Life's experiences are intended to make you eventually face yourself. Face reality!

— Harold Sherman

The knowledge of truth, combined with the proper regard for it and its' faithful observance, constitutes true education.

— Joseph F. Smith

When the dictators and the opportunists are gone, the cross will still stand before us and something in us will say, That is the real thing.

— Ralph W. Sockman

Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

When truth is discovered by someone else, it loses something of its attractiveness.

— Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Truth is always the strongest argument.

— Sophocles

People deserve... the truth. They deserve honesty. The best music, you can seek some shelter in it momentarily, but it's essentially there to provide you something to face the world with.

— Bruce Springsteen

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.

— Wallace Stevens

The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance.

— W. Clement Stone

One should be just as careful about lying as about telling the truth.

— Lionel Strachey

What is true is true, and what is false is false...

— Emanuel Swedenborg

A truth looks freshest in the fashions of the day.

— Lord Alfred Tennyson

Of course, it is the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

— Margaret Thatcher

I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

— Hunter S. Thompson

Between whom there is hearty truth, there is love.

— Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak truth -- one to speak, and another to hear.

— Henry David Thoreau

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

— Henry David Thoreau

If truth is beauty, then how come no one has their hair done in a library?

— Lily Tomlin

Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.

— Harry S Truman

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

— Harry S Truman

We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are.

— Harry S Truman

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

— Mark Twain

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

— Mark Twain

I never could tell a lie that anybody would doubt, nor a truth that anybody would believe.

— Mark Twain

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

— Mark Twain

Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time.

— Mark Twain

No real gentleman will tell the naked truth in the presence of ladies.

— Mark Twain

The open-minded see the truth in different things: the narrow-minded see only the differences.

— Source Unknown

The TRUTH: It may not lead you to where you thought you were going, but it will always lead you somewhere better. When ignored, it will eventually show itself. The closeness of your relationships is directly proportional to the degree to which you have revealed the truth about yourself. It can be painful.

— Source Unknown

Truth is the greatest gift of life and love is the exercise of that truth.

— Source Unknown

Truth comes only to a prepared mind.

— Source Unknown

When in doubt, tell the truth.

— Source Unknown

Have a deep respect for the source of life and also for the ocean, for the forest, for the stars and for the truth.

— Source Unknown

Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.

— Source Unknown

Just because you can laugh doesn't mean you can't tell the truth. Truth is often the jester.

— Source Unknown

Nothing ruins the truth like stretching it.

— Source Unknown

I have seen the truth and it makes no sense.

— Source Unknown

Being free of pretence does not mean you are in touch with the truth. Sincerity is not proof.

— Source Unknown

Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.

— Paul Valery

To announce truths is an infallible receipt for being persecuted.

— Voltaire

Truth is a fruit which should not be plucked until it is ripe.

— Voltaire

To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful.

— Hellmut Walters

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

— Alan W. Watts

In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself -- only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.

— Simone Weil

I have done more harm by the falseness of trying to please than by the honesty of trying to hurt.

— Jessamyn West