Ei sa che 'l vero parlo:
ché legno vecchio mai non róse tarlo.
Canzone 360, st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death
“We are all worms. But I do believe I am a glow-worm.”
Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
As quoted by Violet Bonham-Carter in Winston Churchill as I Knew Him (1965), according to The Yale Book of Quotations (2006), Fred R. Shapiro, Yale University Press, p. 155 ISBN 0300107986
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches
“I am Phædrus, that is who I am, and they are going to destroy me for speaking the Truth.”
Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 31
“I am a lie who always speaks the truth.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker
"La Paquet Rouge" in Opéra (1925)
“He who knows the truth and does not speak it is a miserable coward.”
Julius Streicher (1885–1946) German politician
Alternate version: He who knows the truth and does not speak it truly is a miserable creature.
Quoted in "Julius Streicher" - Page 211 - By Randall L. Bytwerk
William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher
The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: p>We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.</p
“I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head…”
Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist
In response to the September 11 attacks on New York City
2001
Context: I can't even think about this movie. I don't WANT to think about it because if I think about it I will have to face an ugly truth that has been gnawing through my head...
This started out as a documentary on gun violence in America, but the largest mass murder in our history was just committed — without the use of a single gun! Not a single bullet fired! No bomb was set off, no missile was fired, no weapon (i. e., a device that was solely and specifically manufactured to kill humans) was used. A boxcutter! — I can't stop thinking about this. A thousand gun control laws would not have prevented this massacre. What am I doing?
John Donne (1572–1631) English poet
No. 76, preached to the Earl of Carlisle, c. autumn 1622
LXXX Sermons (1640)
“2084. He that does not speak Truth to me, does not believe me when I speak Truth.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“I am speaking to tell the truth, not from hatred or scorn of anyone.”
Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere
Io parlo per ver dire,
non per odio d'altrui, né per disprezzo.
Canzone 128, st. 4
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life
