“By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.”

“Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

“My primary concept in approaching the production of THX 1138 was to make a kind of cinema verité film of the future — something that would look like a documentary crew had made a film about some character in a time yet to come.”

George Lucas (1944) American film producer

“There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

“Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

“A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.”

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) pre-eminent leader of Indian nationalism during British-ruled India

“What I'm dealing with is so vast and great that it can't be called the truth. It's above the truth.”

Sun Ra (1914–1993) American jazz composer and bandleader

“God's truth is too sacred to be expounded to superficial worldliness in its transient fit of earnestness.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian