quotations about truth
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
JOHN LOCKE
letter to Anthony Collins, October 30, 1703
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
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
All things to all men only fools will tell,
Truth profits none but those that use it well.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Wise Men of Greece: In a Series of Dramatic Dialogues
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
Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"The Silent Shepherds"
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook H", Aphorisms
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.
WILL ROGERS
The Illiterate Digest
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
The truth ... is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution.
J. K. ROWLING
The Sorcerer's Stone
It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.
GEORG CHRISTOPH LICHTENBERG
"Notebook G", Aphorisms
Not everything that's true needs to be said.
CASSANDRA CLARE
City of Bones
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
He that hath truth on his side is a fool as well as a coward if he is afraid to own it because of other men's opinions.
DANIEL DEFOE
The History of the Union Between England and Scotland
Truth is beauty. That can be a hard thing to say, because some things are not so attractive on the surface. But by owning up to them, we change them--just by speaking them.
BONO
Oprah Magazine, April 2004
Any given man sees only a tiny portion of the total truth, and very often, in fact almost ... perpetually, he deliberately deceives himself about that little precious fragment as well.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
Nature has completely hid truth in the bottom of a well.
DEMOCRITUS
attributed, Day's Collacon