quotations about truth
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
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Annajanska
The greatest truths are the simplest.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Because a thing is eloquently expressed it should not be taken to be as necessarily true; nor because it is uttered with stammering lips should it be supposed false.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
There is often more truth in the censure of enemies than in the flattery of friends.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
The truth is always the same ... and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
Truth hurts. Maybe not as much as jumping on a bicycle with a seat missing, but it hurts.
LT. FRANK DREBIN (LESLIE NIELSEN)
Naked Gun 2 1/2
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
One great disadvantage to the cause of truth is, its being so often in the hands of liars.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters and Reflections
Truth is not what makes people feel good. Unfortunately, bad news can be true.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
Some things are too terrible to be true.
BOB DYLAN
"Honest With Me"
We must not put Truth into the place of a means, but into the place of an end.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Auguries of Innocence
The color of truth is grey.
ANDRE GIDE
Autumn Leaves
One handles truths like dynamite.
ANAÏS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
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"
I am quite prepared to admit that being habitual liars and self-deluders, we have good cause to fear the truth, but I'm not at all ready to stop hoping. There may be some truths that are, after all, our friends in the universe.
SAUL BELLOW
The Paris Review, winter 1966
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it.
MALCOLM X
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
There are some things that can't be the truth even if they did happen.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you are the Truth. If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time.
ECKHART TOLLE
A New Earth