Quotes about the truth
page 11

“Whoever takes the truth and puts it into action with all his heart, will and life can succeed. This mindset will be completed when trusting only in God and leaning on Him.”

Jung Myung Seok (1945) South Korean Leader of New Religious Movement, Poet, Author, Founder of Wolmyeongdong Center

Extracted from the Wolmyeongdong Website http://wmd.god21.net/WolMyeongDong/Founder

Life, God, Heart

“Accept no substitutes; I bring truth to the youth.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

"Holla If Ya Hear Me" http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/2pac/hollaifyahearme.html (1993). 1990s

Youth

“My life, the most truthful one, is unrecognizable, extremely interior, and there is no single word that gives it meaning.”

Clarice Lispector book The Hour of the Star

The Hour of the Star (1977)

Life

“Either one or the other [ analysis or synthesis ] may be direct or indirect. The direct procedure is when the point of departure is known-direct synthesis in the elements of geometry. By combining at random simple truths with each other, more complicated ones are deduced from them. This is the method of discovery, the special method of inventions, contrary to popular opinion.”

André-Marie Ampère (1775–1836) French physicist and mathematician

André-Marie Ampè, in André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics http://books.google.co.in/books?id=QWZKQWB-sbQC&pg=PA159, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 159

Departure

“Oh! human stupidity, do you not perceive that, though you have been with yourself all your life, you are not yet aware of the thing you possess most of, that is of your folly? and then, with the crowd of sophists, you deceive yourselves and others, despising the mathematical sciences, in which truth dwells and the knowledge of the things included in them. And then you occupy yourself with miracles, and write that you possess information of those things of which the human mind is incapable and which cannot be proved by any instance from nature. And you fancy you have wrought miracles when you spoil a work of some speculative mind, and do not perceive that you are falling into the same error as that of a man who strips a tree of the ornament of its branches covered with leaves mingled with the scented blossoms or fruit.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIX Philosophical Maxims. Morals. Polemics and Speculations.

Life, Stupidity, Error, Mathematics

“There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Pearls of Wisdom

Beauty, Soul, Universe, Help

“The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
…
If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States. There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful. Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort.”

Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965) Vice President of the United States

" The Danger of American Fascism http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm," in New York Times, April 9, 1944. Quoted in: Democracy Reborn (New York, 1944) p. 259.

Money, War, Way, Search

“When men's hearts are melted under the preaching of the word, or by sickness, or the loss of friends, believers should be very eager to stamp the truth upon the prepared mind. Such opportunities are to be seized with holy eagerness.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 129.

Men, Loss, Heart

“The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us.”

Paul Valéry (1871–1945) French poet, essayist, and philosopher

Le mal de prendre une hypallage pour une découverte, une métaphore pour une démonstration, un vomissement de mots pour un torrent de connaissances capitales, et soi-même pour un oracle, ce mal naît avec nous.
Introduction to the Method of Leonardo da Vinci (1895)

Spring

“Dialogue is much more than the communication of a truth. It arises from the enjoyment of speaking and it enriches those who express their love for one another through the medium of words. This is an enrichment which does not consist in objects but in persons who share themselves in dialogue. A preaching which would be purely moralistic or doctrinaire, or one which turns into a lecture on biblical exegesis, detracts from this heart-to-heart communication which takes place in the homily and possesses a quasi-sacramental character: “Faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes by the preaching of Christ””

Pope Francis (1936) 266th Pope of the Catholic Church

Rom 10:17
Section 142
2010s, 2013, Evangelii Gaudium · The Joy of the Gospel

Love, Faith, Communication, Heart

“King of the animals — as thou hast described him — I should rather say king of the beasts, thou being the greatest — because thou hast spared slaying them, in order that they may give thee their children for the benefit of the gullet, of which thou hast attempted to make a sepulchre for all animals; and I would say still more, if it were allowed me to speak the entire truth. But we do not go outside human matters in telling of one supreme wickedness, which does not happen among the animals of the earth, inasmuch as among them are found none who eat their own kind, unless through want of sense.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), XIV Anatomy, Zoology and Physiology

Children, Sense, Animals

““The dominance hierarchy is a mechanism that selects heroes and breeds them. And so then we watch that for six million years. We start to understand what it means to be the hero. We start to tell stories about that, and so then not only are we genetically aiming at that with the dominance hierarchies - the selection mechanism mediated by female choice - but our stories are trying to push us in that direction. And so then we say, 'Well, look, that person is admirable.' We tell a story about him. And then we say, 'This person is admirable,' and we tell a story about him. And at the same time we talk about the people who aren't admirable. And then we start having admirable and non-admirable as categories. And out of that you get something like good and evil. And then you can start to imagine the perfect person. You take ten admirable people and you pull out someone who is meta-admirable. And that's a hero. That becomes a religious figure across time. That becomes a savior or a messiah across time as we conceptualize what the ideal person is. In the West here's how we figured it out: we said that the ideal man is the person that tells the truth. And what that means is that it's the best way of climbing up any possible dominance hierarchy in the way that's most stable and most lasting. That's the conclusion of Western culture."”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

People, Way, Imagination, Understanding

“Joy from truth's own glass of fire
Sweetly on the searcher smiles;
Lest on virtue's steeps he tire,
Joy the tedious path beguiles.
High on faith's bright hill before us,
See her banner proudly wave!
Joy, too, swells the angels' chorus,—
Bursts the bondage of the grave!”

Friedrich Schiller Ode to Joy

Stanza 5
An die Freude (Ode to Joy; or Hymn to Joy) (1785)

Faith, Smile, Angels, Joy

“3. Finally, we are contemporaries of a new departure in the doctrine of truth, following the dissolution of its relation of organic concretion to knowledge. It is noticeable, after the fact, that to this day veracity, as I call it, has reigned without quarter: however strange it may seem, it is quite appropriate to say that truth is a new word in Europe (and elsewhere). Moreover, this theme of truth crosses the paths of Heidegger (who was the first to subtract it from knowledge), the mathematicians (who broke with the object at the end of the last century, just as they broke with adequation), and the modern theories of the subject (which displace truth from its subject pronunciation).”

Alain Badiou (1937) French writer and philosopher

Introduction
Being and Event (1988)

Departure, Knowledge

“It would be better, I think, for the man who really seeks the truth not to ask what the poets say; rather, he should first learn the method of finding the scientific premises that I discussed in the second book; then he should train and exercise himself in this method; and when his training is sufficiently advanced, then, as he approaches each particular problem, he should enquire into the premise needed for proving it, which premise he should take from simple sense-perception, which from experience, whether drawn from life or from the arts, which from the truths clearly apprehended by the mind, in order to draw out from them the desired conclusion.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato,: PHP III 8.35.1-11 translation: De Lacy, Phillip (1978- 1984) Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato, Berlin. p. 233; cited in: Christopher Jon Elliott. "Galen, Rome and the Second Sophistic." p. 147-8.

Life, Books, Art, Exercises

“First, [the bourgeoisie] must recognize his own impotence, his incapacity to believe in a sense of history, even if his reason leans towards the truth, the passions and prejudices produced by his class position, prevent him from accepting it. So he should not exert himself with proving the truth of the historical mission of the working class; rather, he should learn to subdue his petty bourgeois passions and prejudices. He should take lessions from those who were once as important as he is now, but are ready to risk all for the revolutionary Cause.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

38
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

History, Sense, Learning, Passion

“The truth is that, promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient, especially when it's inconvenient. Because the highest purpose of science is the search for knowledge, truth and a greater understanding of the world around us. That will be my goal as President of the United States, and I could not have a better team to guide me in this work.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

President-elect Obama's Weekly Address (20 December 2008) http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/barackobama/barackobamaweeklytransition7.htm 2008

World, Search, Understanding, Knowledge

“Nearly four years after our country invaded and occupied Iraq, Americans are facing the painful truth that our nation has failed to achieve the Bush administration’s ambitious goals for that tragic land.”

Anthony Zinni (1943) American Marine Corps general

The Battle for Peace

Pain, Country

“I thought about this question. I answered it as best I could [at the press conference]. I felt I didn't tell [the reporter] what I really wanted to say. He thought I was Christian. And I am by birth; my parents were and my early teachings were Christian. But as I look upon the world, I feel all men know the truth. If a man was a Christian, he could know the truth and he could not. The truth itself does not have any name on it. And each man has to find it for himself, I think.”

John Coltrane (1926–1967) American jazz saxophonist

Liner notes for Live in Japan. Impulse. GRD-4-102, 1991.

Men, World, Feeling, Birth

“The revelation still seems to me so terrible that the silence of men, heaped under the roofs down there at my feet, seizes and threatens me. And if I am but timidly formulating it within myself, that is because each of us has lived in reality more than his life, and because my training has filled me, like the rest, with centuries of shadow, of humiliation and captivity.
It is establishing itself cautiously; but it is the truth, and there are moments when logic seizes you in its godlike whirlwind.”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XX The Cult

Life, Men, Reality, Silence

“Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.”

Jules Verne book A Journey to the Center of the Earth

La science, mon garçon, est faite d’erreurs, mais d’erreurs qu’il est bon de commettre, car elles mènent peu à peu à la vérité.
Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), Ch. XXXI: Preparations for a voyage of discovery

Error, Science

“I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice. This disposition is awfully fearful in any and that it now exists in ours, though grating to our feelings to admit, it would be a violation of truth and an insult to our intelligence to deny.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1830s, The Lyceum Address (1838)

Fear, Justice, Law, Hope

“Death is a bend in the road,
To die is to slip out of view.
If I listen, I hear your steps
Existing as I exist.

The earth is made of heaven.
Error has no nest.
No one has ever been lost.
All is truth and way.”

Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publisher and philosopher

A morte é a curva da estrada,
Morrer é só não ser visto.
Se escuto, eu te oiço a passada
Existir como eu existo.A terra é feita de céu.
A mentira não tem ninho.
Nunca ninguém se perdeu.
Tudo é verdade e caminho.
"A morte é a curva da estrada" (23 May 1932), in A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe, trans. Richard Zenith (Penguin, 2006)

Death, Way, Error

“[ Fuzzy logic is ] a logic whose distinguishing features are (i) fuzzy truth-values expressed in linguistic terms, e. g., true, very true, more or less true, or somewhat true, false, nor very true and not very false, etc2.; (2) imprecise truth tables; and (3) rules of inference whose validity is relative to a context rather than exact.”

Lotfi A. Zadeh (1921–2017) Electrical engineer and computer scientist

Zadeh (1975) "Fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning". Synthese 30: p. 407
1970s

Falseness

“The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

As quoted in International Herald Tribune (12 March 1990)

“Karpov, Kasparov, Korchnoi have absolutely destroyed chess by their immoral, unethical, prearranged games. These guys are really the lowest dogs around, and if people knew the truth about them, they would be held in more contempt than Ben Johnson, the runner, and they're going to know the truth when I do this book!”

Bobby Fischer (1943–2008) American chess prodigy, chess player, and chess writer

Press Conference, September 1 1992 http://www.bobby-fischer.net/Bobby_Fischer_Articles6.html 1990s

People, Books, Dogs, Guy

“The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous" http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2002/09/16vonnegut1.html, McSweeny's (September 2002) Various interviews

Art, Way

“When, in youth, I learned what was called "philosophy" … no one ever mentioned to me the question of "meaning." Later, I became acquainted with Lady Welby's work on the subject, but failed to take it seriously. I imagined that logic could be pursued by taking it for granted that symbols were always, so to speak, transparent, and in no way distorted the objects they were supposed to "mean." Purely logical problems have gradually led me further and further from this point of view. Beginning with the question whether the class of all those classes which are not members of themselves is, or is not, a member of itself; continuing with the problem whether the man who says "I am lying" is lying or speaking the truth; passing through the riddle "is the present King of France bald or not bald, or is the law of excluded middle false?" I have now come to believe that the order of words in time or space is an ineradicable part of much of their significance – in fact, that the reason they can express space-time occurrences is that they are space-time occurrences, so that a logic independent of the accidental nature of spacetime becomes an idle dream. These conclusions are unpleasant to my vanity, but pleasant to my love of philosophical activity: until vitality fails, there is no reason to be wedded to one's past theories.”

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

Source: 1920s, Review of The Meaning of Meaning (1926), p. 114

Love, Youth, Law, Dreams

“And so they lived many happy years, and the promised tasks were accomplished. Yet long afterward, when all had passed away into distant memory, there were many who wondered whether King Taran, Queen Eilonwy, and their companions had indeed walked the earth, or whether they had been no more than dreams in a tale set down to beguile children. And, in time, only the bards knew the truth of it.”

Lloyd Alexander The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The Chronicles of Prydain (1964–1968), Book V : The High King (1968), Chapter 21 (closing words)

Children, Dreams, Distant, Memory

“I shall not attempt to paint to you the feelings of this heart, nor the majestic beauty and glory which surrounded us on this occasion; but you will believe me when I say, that earth, nor men, with the eloquence of time, cannot begin to clothe language in as interesting and sublime a manner as this holy personage. No; nor has this earth power to give the joy, to bestow the peace, or comprehend the wisdom which was contained in each sentence as they were delivered by the power of the Holy Spirit! Man may deceive his fellow-men, deception may follow deception, and the children of the wicked one may have power to seduce the foolish and untaught, till naught but fiction feeds the many, and the fruit of falsehood carries in its current the giddy to the grave; but one touch with the finger of his love, yes, one ray of glory from the upper world, or one word from the mouth of the Savior, from the bosom of eternity, strikes it all into insignificance, and blots it forever from the mind. The assurance that we were in the presence of an angel, the certainty that we heard the voice of Jesus, and the truth unsullied as it flowed from a pure personage, dictated by the will of God, is to me past description, and I shall ever look upon this expression of the Savior’s goodness with wonder and thanksgiving while I am permitted to tarry; and in those mansions where perfection dwells and sin never comes, I hope to adore in that day which shall never cease.”

Oliver Cowdery (1806–1850) American Mormon leader

Letter from Oliver Cowder to W.W. Phelps (Letter I), (September 7, 1834). Published in Latter Day Saints' Messenger and Advocate, Vol. I. No. 1. Kirtland, Ohio, October, 1834. Published in Letters by Oliver Cowdery to W.W. Phelps on the Rise of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Liverpool, 1844.

Love, Wisdom, Men, God

“Essentially, we are still the same people as those in the period of the Reformation - and how should it be otherwise? But we no longer allow ourselves certain means to gain victory for our opinion: this distinguishes us from that age and proves that we belong to a higher culture. These days, if a man still attacks and crushes opinions with suspicions and outbursts of rage, in the manner of men during the Reformation, he clearly betrays that he would have burnt his opponents, had he lived in other times, and that he would have taken recourse to all the means of the Inquisition, had he lived as an opponent of the Reformation. In its time, the Inquisition was reasonable, for it meant nothing other than the general martial law which had to be proclaimed over the whole domain of the church, and which, like every state of martial law, justified the use of the extremest means, namely under the assumption (which we no longer share with those people) that one possessed truth in the church and had to preserve it at any cost, with any sacrifice, for the salvation of mankind. But now we will no longer concede so easily that anyone has the truth; the rigorous methods of inquiry have spread sufficient distrust and caution, so that we experience every man who represents opinions violently in word and deed as any enemy of our present culture, or at least as a backward person. And in fact, the fervor about having the truth counts very little today in relation to that other fervor, more gentle and silent, to be sure, for seeking the truth, a search that does not tire of learning afresh and testing anew.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book Human, All Too Human

Wir sind im Wesentlichen noch dieselben Menschen, wie die des Zeitalters der Reformation: wie sollte es auch anders sein? Aber dass wir uns einige Mittel nicht mehr erlauben, um mit ihnen unsrer Meinung zum Siege zu verhelfen, das hebt uns gegen jene Zeit ab und beweist, dass wir einer höhern Cultur angehören. Wer jetzt noch, in der Art der Reformations-Menschen, Meinungen mit Verdächtigungen, mit Wuthausbrüchen bekämpft und niederwirft, verräth deutlich, dass er seine Gegner verbrannt haben würde, falls er in anderen Zeiten gelebt hätte, und dass er zu allen Mitteln der Inquisition seine Zuflucht genommen haben würde, wenn er als Gegner der Reformation gelebt hätte. Diese Inquisition war damals vernünftig, denn sie bedeutete nichts Anderes, als den allgemeinen Belagerungszustand, welcher über den ganzen Bereich der Kirche verhängt werden musste, und der, wie jeder Belagerungszustand, zu den äussersten Mitteln berechtigte, unter der Voraussetzung nämlich (welche wir jetzt nicht mehr mit jenen Menschen theilen), dass man die Wahrheit, in der Kirche, habe, und um jeden Preis mit jedem Opfer zum Heile der Menschheit bewahren müsse. Jetzt aber giebt man Niemandem so leicht mehr zu, dass er die Wahrheit habe: die strengen Methoden der Forschung haben genug Misstrauen und Vorsicht verbreitet, so dass Jeder, welcher gewaltthätig in Wort und Werk Meinungen vertritt, als ein Feind unserer jetzigen Cultur, mindestens als ein zurückgebliebener empfunden wird. In der That: das Pathos, dass man die Wahrheit habe, gilt jetzt sehr wenig im Verhältniss zu jenem freilich milderen und klanglosen Pathos des Wahrheit-Suchens, welches nicht müde wird, umzulernen und neu zu prüfen.
Section IX, "Man Alone with Himself" / aphorism 633
Human, All Too Human (1878), Helen Zimmern translation

Men, People, Age, Law

“When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man's moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

"Consistency", paper read at the Hartford Monday Evening Club on 5 December 1887. The Complete Essays of Mark Twain, p. 582 http://books.google.com/books?id=sujuHO_fvJgC&pg=PA582&dq=%22When+the+doctrine+of+allegiance%22 (First published in the 1923 edition of Mark Twain's Speeches, ed. Albert Bigelow Paine, pp. 120-130, where it is incorrectly dated "following the Blaine-Cleveland campaign, 1884." (See Mark Twain's Notebooks & Journals (1979), ed. Frederick Anderson, Vol. 3, p. 41, footnote 92 http://books.google.com/books?id=kMbeUm4pJwsC&pg=PA41) Many reprints repeat Paine's dating.)

Fools, Country

“This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids; to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace; to reclaim the American Dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that, out of many, we are one; that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubts and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can.
Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2008, Election victory speech (November 2008)

God, People, Peace, Dreams

“The future belongs to the young. It is a young and new world which is now under process of development and it is the young who must create it. But it is also a world of truth, courage, justice, lofty aspiration and straightforward fulfilment which we seek to create. For the coward, for the self-seeker, for the talker who goes forward at the beginning and afterwards leaves his fellows in the lurch there is no place in the future of this movement. A brave, frank, clean-hearted, courageous and aspiring youth is the only foundation on which the future nation can be built….”

Sri Aurobindo (1872–1950) Indian nationalist, freedom fighter, philosopher, yogi, guru and poet

August 7, 1909
India's Rebirth

Youth, World, Justice, Courage

“We suppose, it would seem, that concepts grow in the individual mind like leaves on a tree, and we think to discover their nature by studying their growth; we seek to define them psychologically, in terms of the human mind. But this account makes everything subjective, and if we follow it through to the end, does away with truth. What is known as the history of concepts is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of words.”

Gottlob Frege (1848–1925) mathematician, logician, philosopher

Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, 1893 and 1903

History, Nature, Knowledge, Thinking

“That which transcends country, which is greater than country, can only reveal itself through one’s country. God has manifested his one eternal nature in just such a variety of forms… I can assure you that through the open sky of India you will be able to see the sun therefore there is no need to cross the ocean and sit at the window of a Christian church. … “I have nothing more to say,” answered Gora, “only this much I would add. You must understand that the Hindu religion takes in its lap, like a mother, people of different ideas and opinions, in other words, the Hindu religion looks upon man as man and does not count him as belonging to a particular party. It honours not only the wise but the foolish also and it shows respect not merely to one form of wisdom but to wisdom in all its aspects. Christians do not want to acknowledge diversity; they say that on one side is Christian religion and on the other eternal destruction, and between these two there is no middle path. And because we have studied under these Christians we have become ashamed of the variety that is there in Hinduism. We fail to see that through this diversity Hinduism is coming to realise the oneness of all. Unless we can free ourselves from this whirlpool of Christian teaching we shall not become fit for the glorious truths of Hindu religion.””

Rabindranath Tagore book Gora

Rabindranath Tagore, Gora, translated into English, Calcutta, 1961. Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 13 ISBN 9788185990354 https://web.archive.org/web/20120501043412/http://voiceofdharma.org/books/hhce/

Wisdom, God, People, Religion

“Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.”

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

Fact and Fiction (1961), Part II, Ch. 10: "University Education", p. 153
1960s

Distant

“As the eye naturally seeks the light and vision, and our body naturally desires food and drink, so our mind is possessed with a becoming and natural desire to become acquainted with the truth of God and the causes of things.”

Origen (185–254) Christian scholar in Alexandria

On First Principles, Bk. 2, ch. 11; vol. 1, p. 148
On First Principles

God, Food, Drink, Nature

“So maybe it's not the politicians who suck; maybe it's something else. Like the public. That would be a nice realistic campaign slogan for somebody: "The public sucks. Elect me." Put the blame where it belongs: on the people. Because if everything is really the fault of politicians, where are all the bright, honest, intelligent Americans who are ready to step in and replace them? Where are these people hiding? The truth is, we don't have people like that. Everyone's at the mall, scratching his balls and buying sneakers with lights in them. And complaining about the politicians.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Napalm and Silly Putty (2001)

People, Intelligence, Light

“Like all real heroes, Charley had a fatal flaw. He refused to believe that he had gonorrhea, whereas the truth was that he did.”

Kurt Vonnegut book God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

On Charley Warmergran, the Fire Chief of Rosewater.
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965)

“Happily, at forty-six I still feel as experimental and on the verge of getting at the truth as ever.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Saturday 21 April, 1929
A Moment's Liberty (1990)

Feeling

“And we both know. That people change. When truth’s not part of their lives. I’ve seen the love in their eyes. Don’t say goodbye. Goodbye. ~ "Murray"”

Pete Yorn (1974) American musician

Song lyrics

Love, People, Change, Parting

“It must be recognized that the real truths of history are hard to discover. Happily, for the most part, they are rather matters of curiosity than of real importance.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

History, Parting

“A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

As Harris K. Telemacher in "L.A. Story" (1991)

Kiss

“When you tell a lie often enough, you become unable to distinguish it from the truth.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Lie

“Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)

Thinking

“We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

Suffering, Falseness

“For history, I say again, has this and this only for its own: if a man will start upon it, he must sacrifice to no God but Truth; he must neglect all else; his sole rule and unerring guide is this – to think not of those who are listening to him now, but of the yet unborn who shall seek his converse.”

Lucian (120) ancient Greek writer

Sect. 39; vol. 2, pp. 128-9; H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler (trans.) The Works of Lucian of Samosata.
How to Write History

God, History, Thinking

“First of all, I want to say this about myself: I have altogether too important things to think of to feel any concern over my own death; and now I cannot speak to you insincerely within five minutes of being shot. I am telling you the literal truth when I say that my concern is for many other things.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1910s, Address at Milwaukee, Wisconsin (1912)

Death, Feeling, Thinking

“1200. Craft must have Clothes; but Truth loves to go naked.”

Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual

Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)

Love, Clothes

“To say the truth, whatever improvement private study may produce, there is still a peculiar advantage attendant on our appearance in the forum, where the light is different and there is an appearance of real responsibility quite different from the fictitious cases of the schools. If we estimate the two separately, practice without learning will be of more avail than learning without practice.”
Et hercule quantumlibet secreta studia contulerint, est tamen proprius quidam fori profectus, alia lux, alia veri discriminis facies, plusque, si separes, usus sine doctrina quam citra usum doctrina valeat.

Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor

Book XII, Chapter VI, 4; translation by Rev. John Selby Watson
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)

School, Study, Light, Learning

“Your rulers and your dignitaries are those who are clad in plush garments, and they shall not be able to recognize the truth.”

Thomas the Apostle Apostle of Jesus Christ

78
Gospel of Thomas (c. 50? — c. 140?)

“In God is my being, my I, my strength, I no longer see union, for I know nothing more and can see nothing more than him alone without me. I do not know where the I is, nor do I seek it, nor do I wish to know or be cognizant of it my bliss, my desire. But this I that I often call so…in truth I no longer know what the I is, or the Mine, or desire, or the good, or bliss.”

Catherine of Genoa (1447–1510) Italian author and nurse

P.108.

God

“Grant me an old man’s frenzy,
Myself must I remake
Till I am Timon and Lear
Or that William Blake
Who beat upon the wall
Till Truth obeyed his call.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

An Acre of Grass, st. 3
Last Poems (1936-1939)

“Life's hard. To be in peace with oneself, one must speak the truth. To be in peace with others, one must lie.”

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) Argentine novelist

"La vida es difícil. Para estar en paz con uno mismo hay que decir la verdad. Para estar en paz con el prójimo hay que mentir."
Descanso de caminantes, 2001.

Life, Lie, Peace

“Death is a state of non-being. That which is not, does not exist. Therefore death does not exist. Only truth exists. Truth and beauty. Each is interchangeable, but are aspects of themselves. Er, what specifically did they say they had in mind for me?”

Woody Allen book Side Effects

Side Effects (1980), My Apology

Death, Beauty

“The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.”

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

"How to Become a Philosopher" (1942), in The Art of Philosophizing, and Other Essays (New York: Philosophical Library, 1968), p. 2
1940s

Life, People, World, Feeling

“One sees their shadows stirring on the shining sad expanse of the plain, and reflected in the pallid stagnant surface of the old trenches, which now only the infinite void of space inhabits and purifies, in the center of a polar desert whose horizons fume.
But their eyes are opened. They are beginning to make out the boundless simplicity of things. And Truth not only invests them with a dawn of hope, but raises on it a renewal of strength and courage.”

Henri Barbusse book Under Fire

Under Fire (1916), Ch. 24 - The Dawn

Sadness, Hope, Courage

“Error is not a mere accident of an untrained intellect, but a necessary stage or feature or moment of the expression of the truth.”

Josiah Royce (1855–1916) United States philosopher

Lectures on Modern Idealism (1919), p. 79

Error

“In mathematics there is a certain way of seeking the truth, a way which Plato is said first to have discovered and which was called "analysis" by Theon and was defined by him as "taking the thing sought as granted and proceeding by means of what follows to a truth which is uncontested"; so, on the other hand, "synthesis" is "taking the thing that is granted and proceeding by means of what follows to the conclusion and comprehension of the thing sought." And although the ancients set forth a twofold analysis, the zetetic and the poristic, to which Theon's definition particularly refers, it is nevertheless fitting that there be established also a third kind, which may be called rhetic or exegetic, so that there is a zetetic art by which is found the equation or proportion between the magnitude that is being sought and those that are given, a poristic art by which from the equation or proportion the truth of the theorem set up is investigated, and an exegetic art by which from the equation set up or the proportion, there is produced the magnitude itself which is being sought. And thus, the whole threefold analytic art, claiming for itself this office, may be defined as the science of right finding in mathematics…. the zetetic art does not employ its logic on numbers—which was the tediousness of the ancient analysts—but uses its logic through a logistic which in a new way has to do with species [of number]…”

François Viète (1540–1603) French mathematician

Source: In artem analyticem Isagoge (1591), Ch. 1 as quoted by Jacob Klein, Greek Mathematical Thought and the Origin of Algebra (1934-1936) Appendix.

Art, Way, Mathematics, Science

“My abandonment of former beliefs was, however, never complete. Some things remained with me, and still remain: I still think that truth depends upon a relation to fact, and that facts in general are nonhuman; I still think that man is cosmically unimportant, and that a Being, if there were one, who could view the universe impartially, without the bias of here and now, would hardly mention man, except perhaps in a footnote near the end of the volume; but I no longer have the wish to thrust out human elements from regions where they belong; I have no longer the feeling that intellect is superior to sense, and that only Plato's world of ideas gives access to the 'real' world. I used to think of sense, and of thought which is built on sense, as a prison from which we can be freed by thought which is emancipated from sense. I now have no such feelings. I think of sense, and of thoughts built on sense, as windows, not as prison bars. I think that we can, however imperfectly, mirror the world, like Leibniz's monads; and I think it is the duty of the philosopher to make himself as undistorting a mirror as he can. But it is also his duty to recognize such distortions as are inevitable from our very nature. Of these, the most fundamental is that we view the world from the point of view of the here and now, not with that large impartiality which theists attribute to the Deity. To achieve such impartiality is impossible for us, but we can travel a certain distance towards it. To show the road to this end is the supreme duty of the philosopher.”

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

Source: 1950s, My Philosophical Development (1959), p. 213

World, Travel, Feeling, Idea

“He who seeks truth must be content with a lonely, little-trodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his place with the members of that wretched crowd who shouted for two long hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!"”

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

till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 604.

“This ideal is evidently still very imaginary, and may seem of but little importance; and infinite time must elapse, as in all other cases, before the certitude of those who are convinced that the race so far has erred in the choice of its aliment (assuming the truth of this statement to be borne out by experience) shall reach the confused masses, and bring them enlightenment and comfort. But may this not be the expedient Nature holds in reserve for the time when the struggle for life shall have become too hopelessly unbearable--the struggle for life that today means the fight for meat and for alcohol, double source of injustice and waste whence all the others are fed, double symbol of a happiness and necessity whereof neither is human?”

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949) Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist

Source: The Buried Temple (1902), Ch. III: "The Kingdom of Matter", § 5

Life, Alcohol, Nature, Time

“I want to proclaim a truth that would forever exile me from among the living. I know only the conditions but not the words that would allow me to formulate it.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Drawn and Quartered (1983)

“Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul,’ I cried.
‘My friends are gone, but that’s a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied.”

W.B. Yeats book The Winding Stair and Other Poems

Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1471/, st. 2 The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1933)

“When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 38
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Life, Idea, Universe, Perfection

“To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.”

Novalis (1772–1801) German poet and writer

Novalis (1829)

“"Some people are desperately looking for scapegoats, they just don't want to see the truth!" (Jon commenting on the parents that blame music for the violence.)”

Jonathan Davis (1971) Heavy metal singer, frontman for Korn

People, Music, Parent

“To tell the truth is revolutionary.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

The first number of L'Ordine Nuovo, edited by Gramsci, appeared in 1921 with this motto of Ferdinand Lassalle on the first page. It is often misattributed to Gramsci.
Misattributed

“The lie was dead
And damned, and truth stood up instead.”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

Bells and Pomegranates No. III: Dramatic Lyrics: Count Gismond (1842), xiii.

Lie, Dead

“The woods of Arcady are dead,
And over is their antique joy;
Of old the world on dreaming fed;
Grey Truth is now her painted toy;
Yet still she turns her restless head.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Source: Crossways (1889), The Song Of The Happy Shepherd, l. 1–5.

World, Dreams, Joy, Painting

“They stand not aloof with the gaping vacuity of vulgar ignorance, nor bend with the cringe of sycophantic insignificance. The graceful pride of truth knows no extremes, and preserves, in every latitude of life, the right-angled character of man.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Life

“If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself - ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity - before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly.”

Eugene O'Neill (1888–1953) American playwright, and Nobel laureate in Literature

N.Y. Herald Tribune (September 9, 1956)

Life, Learning, Personality

“I have to say, I think that we are in some kind of final examination as to whether human beings now, with this capability to acquire information and to communicate, whether we're really qualified to take on the responsibility we're designed to be entrusted with. And this is not a matter of an examination of the types of governments, nothing to do with politics, nothing to do with economic systems. It has to do with the individual. Does the individual have the courage to really go along with the truth?”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Communication, Courage, Thinking

“One of the great things about America is that individual citizens and groups of citizens can petition their government, can protest, can speak truth to power. And that is sometimes messy and controversial. But because of that ability to protest and engage in free speech, America, over time, has gotten better. We've all benefited from that.

The abolition movement was contentious. The effort for women to get the right to vote was contentious and messy. There were times when activists might have engaged in rhetoric that was overheated and occasionally counterproductive. But the point was to raise issues so that we, as a society, could grapple with it. The same was true with the Civil Rights Movement, the union movement, the environmental movement, the anti-war movement during Vietnam. And I think what you're seeing now is part of that longstanding tradition.

What I would say is this -- that whenever those of us who are concerned about fairness in the criminal justice system attack police officers, you are doing a disservice to the cause. First of all, any violence directed at police officers is a reprehensible crime and needs to be prosecuted. But even rhetorically, if we paint police in broad brush, without recognizing that the vast majority of police officers are doing a really good job and are trying to protect people and do so fairly and without racial bias, if our rhetoric does not recognize that, then we're going to lose allies in the reform cause.

Now, in a movement like Black Lives Matter, there's always going to be some folks who say things that are stupid, or imprudent, or overgeneralized, or harsh. And I don't think that you can hold well-meaning activists who are doing the right thing and peacefully protesting responsible for everything that is uttered at a protest site.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Rajoy of Spain After Bilateral Meeting https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/10/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-rajoy-spain-after-bilateral (10 July 2016) 2016

Women, War, People, Stupidity

“Only those who have little need of the truth, and no respect for it — the poets and novelists — can be trusted to do it, for this is one of the cases where the truth does no exist. Nothing exists. The whole thing is a miasma — a mirage.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando: A Biography (1928), Ch. 4

“By refusing to forgive, I give up all illusions. Why should I forgive, when no one is asking me to? I mean, my parents refuse to understand and to know what they did to me. So why should I go on trying to understand and forgive my parents and whatever happened in their childhood, with things like psychoanalysis and transactional analysis? What's the use? Whom does it help? It doesn't help my parents to see the truth. But it does prevent me from experiencing my feelings, the feelings that would give me access to the truth. But under the bell-jar of forgiveness, feelings cannot and may not blossom freely.”

Alice Miller (1923–2010) Swiss psychologist

Breaking Down the Wall of Silence (Abbruch der Schweigemauer) (1990)

Feeling, Forgiveness, Understanding, Parent

“America, it is said, is suffering from intolerance — it is not. It is suffering from tolerance. Tolerance of right and wrong, truth and error, virtue and evil, Christ and chaos. Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

"A Plea For Intolerance" (1931)

Error, Suffering, Evil, Christ

“Take the question whether other people exist. …It is plain that it makes for happiness to believe that they exist – for even the greatest misanthropist would not wish to be deprived of the objects of his hate. Hence the belief that other people exist is, pragmatically, a true belief. But if I am troubled by solipsism, the discovery that a belief in the existence of others is 'true' in the pragmatist's sense is not enough to allay my sense of loneliness: the perception that I should profit by rejecting solipsism is not alone sufficient to make me reject it. For what I desire is not that the belief in solipsism should be false in the pragmatic sense, but that other people should in fact exist. And with the pragmatist's meaning of truth, these two do not necessarily go together. The belief in solipsism might be false even if I were the only person or thing in the universe.”

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

"William James's Conception of Truth" [1908], published in Philosophical Essays (London, 1910)
1900s

Hate, People, Question, Sense

“Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it.”

Mark Twain book Following the Equator

Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XV
Following the Equator (1897)

People

“I have a hard time with historians because they idolize the truth. The truth is not uplifting; it destroys. I could tell most of the secretaries in the church office building that they are ugly and fat. That would be the truth, but it would hurt and destroy them. Historians should tell only that part of the truth that is inspiring and uplifting.”

Boyd K. Packer (1924–2015) American Mormon leader

Quinn (ed), Faithful History: Essays On Writing Mormon History, p 103, fn 22

Time, Parting, Hurt

“Mystical explanations are considered deep; the truth is, they are not even shallow.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Sec. 126; variant translation: Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.
The Gay Science (1882)

“I would like to point out how this travesty was made possible, how it sprang out of the machinations of Major du Paty de Clam, how Generals Mercier, de Boisdeffre and Gonse became so ensnared in this falsehood that they would later feel compelled to impose it as holy and indisputable truth. Having set it all in motion merely by carelessness and lack of intelligence, they seem at worst to have given in to the religious bias of their milieu and the prejudices of their class. In the end, they allowed stupidity to prevail.”

Emile Zola J’accuse…!

J'accuse! (1898)

Stupidity, Feeling, Intelligence

“Is discord going to show itself while we are still fighting, is the Jew once again worth less than another? Oh, it is sad, very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time, the old truth is confirmed: "What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews."”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

22 May 1944
(1942 - 1944)

Sadness, Time, Fight

“These pages are not my confession; they’re my definition. And I feel, as I begin to write it, that I can write it with some semblance of truth.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Education Of the Stoic

Ibid.
The Education of the Stoic

Feeling

“Young people in the audience today, young people like Laura, were born in a place and a time where there is less conflict, more prosperity and more freedom than any time in human history. But that’s not because man’s darkest impulses have vanished. Even here, in Europe, we’ve seen ethnic cleansing in the Balkans that shocked the conscience. The difficulties of integration and globalization, recently amplified by the worst economic crisis of our lifetimes, strained the European project and stirred the rise of a politics that too often targets immigrants or gays or those who seem somehow different. While technology has opened up vast opportunities for trade and innovation and cultural understanding, it’s also allowed terrorists to kill on a horrifying scale. Around the world, sectarian warfare and ethnic conflicts continue to claim thousands of lives. And once again, we are confronted with the belief among some that bigger nations can bully smaller ones to get their way -- that recycled maxim that might somehow makes right. So I come here today to insist that we must never take for granted the progress that has been won here in Europe and advanced around the world, because the contest of ideas continues for your generation. And that’s what’s at stake in Ukraine today. Russia’s leadership is challenging truths that only a few weeks ago seemed self-evident -- that in the 21st century, the borders of Europe cannot be redrawn with force, that international law matters, that people and nations can make their own decisions about their future.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2014, Address to European Youth (March 2014)

People, World, Law, Way

“I never take offence at any genuine effort to wrest the truth or deduce a rational set of values from the confused phenomena of the external world. It never occurs to me to look for personal factors in the age-long battle for truth. I assume that all hands are really trying to achieve the same main object—the discovery of sound facts and the rejection of fallacies—and it strikes me as only a minor matter that different strivers may happen to see a different perspective now and then. And in matters of mere preference, as distinguished from those involving the question of truth versus fallacy, I do not see any ground whatever for acrimonious feeling. Knowing the capriciousness and complexity of the various biological and psychological factors determining likes, dislikes, interests, indifferences, and so on, one can only be astonished that any two persons have even approximately similar tastes. To resent another's different likes and interests is the summit of illogical absurdity. It is very easy to distinguish a sincere, impersonal difference of opinion and tastes from the arbitrary, ill-motivated, and irrational belittlement which springs from a hostile desire to push another down and which constitutes real offensiveness. I have no tolerance for such real offensiveness—but I greatly enjoy debating questions of truth and value with persons as sincere and devoid of malice as I am. Such debate is really a highly valuable—almost indispensable—ingredient of life; because it enables us to test our own opinions and amend them if we find them in any way erroneous or unjustified.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Robert E. Howard (7 November 1932), in Selected Letters 1932-1934 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, p. 102
Non-Fiction, Letters

Life, Hostility, Age, World

“The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Part 6 "Beyond System — The Ultimate Source of Jeet Kune Do"
Jeet Kune Do (1997)

“People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.”

Shelby Foote (1916–2005) Novelist, historian

Interview for the Academy of Achievement, 1999

People, Error, Thinking

“It is better to die well, than to live wrongly (…) who is afraid of death loses the joy of life; truth prevails all, prevails who is killed, because no adversity can harm him, who is not dominated by injustice.”
Melius est bene mori, quam male vivere (...) qui mortem metuit, amittit gaudia vitae; super omnia vincit veritas, vincit, qui occiditur, quia nulla ei nocet adversitas, si nulla ei dominatur iniquitas.

Jan Hus (1369–1415) Czech linguist, religion writer, theologist, university educator and science writer

Quoted in John Huss: His Life, Teachings and Death, After Five Hundred Years (1915) by David Schley Schaff, p. 58.
Jan Hus in Letter to Christian of Prachatice, probably the most influential of his quotes, first adopted as the motto by Hussite warriors, centuries later this motto was inscribed on the banner of the Presidents of the Czechoslovakia and now (in Czech translation) is inscribed on the banner of the President of the Czech Republic.

Life, Death, Joy

“It is in our own mind and not in exterior objects that we perceive most things; fools know scarcely anything because they are empty, and their heart is narrow; but great souls find in themselves a number of exterior things; they have no need to read or travel or to listen or to work to discover the highest truths; they have only to delve into themselves and search, if we may say so, their own thoughts.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 186.

Fools, Travel, Soul, Search

“In all these papers we see a love of honest work, an aversion to shams, a caution in the enunciation of conclusions, a distrust of rash generalizations and speculations based on uncertain premises. He was never anxious to add one more guess on doubtful matters in the hope of hitting the truth, or what might pass as such for a time, but was always ready to take infinite pains in the most careful testing of every theory. With these qualities was united a modesty which forbade the pushing of his own claims and desired no reputation except the unsought tribute of competent judges.”

Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903) physicist

From Gibbs's obituary for Hubert Anson Newton (1897), in the Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences http://www.nasonline.org/publications/biographical-memoirs/memoir-pdfs/hubert-newton.pdf.

Love, Pain, Hope, Time

“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2013, Second Inaugural Address (January 2013)

Women, Men, People, Soul

“When little is done, little is said; silence is the mother of truth.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Bk. IV, Ch. 4.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Tancred (1847)

Silence

“The truth is revolutionary," gasps the nocturnal voice; "get you gone, you men of truth, you who cast disorder among ignorance, you who strew words and sow the wind; you contrivers, begone! You bring in the reign of men! But the multitude hates you and mocks you!”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XIV - The Ruins

Men, Hate

“If somebody asks them, Why, what evil does he practice or teach? they do not know, and cannot tell; but in order that they do not appear to be at a loss, they repeat the ready-made charges which are used against all philosophers about teaching things up in the clouds and under the earth, and having no gods, and making the worse appear the better cause; for they do not like to confess that their pretense of knowledge has been detected — which is the truth…”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

23d
Plato, Apology

God, Knowledge, Appearance, Evil

“[The career a young man should choose should be] one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection … If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Reflections of a Youth on Choosing an Occupation (1835)

Imagination, Idea, Perfection

“It's hard to feel the rush,
To push the dangerous.
I'm gonna run right to, to the edge with you,
Where we can both fall over in love.I'm on the edge of glory,
And I'm hanging on a moment of truth.
Out on the edge of glory,
And I'm hanging on a moment with you.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

The Edge of Glory, written by Lady Gaga, Fernando Garibay, and Paul Blair
Song lyrics, Born This Way (2011)

Feeling

“As for me, I find some wisdom in liberalism, some wisdom in conservatism, and much truth in intellectualism—but I find no salvation in any of them.”

Dallin H. Oaks (1932) Apostle of the LDs Church

" Criticism https://www.lds.org/ensign/1987/02/criticism?lang=eng," edited version of a talk delivered at a Latter-day Saint Student Association fireside in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on 4 May 1986), LDS.org

Wisdom

“For me personally, Wittgenstein was perhaps the philosopher who, besides Russell and Frege, had the greatest influence on my thinking. The most important insight I gained from his work was the conception that the truth of logical statements is based only on their logical structure and on the meaning of the terms. Logical statements are true under all conceivable circumstances; thus their truth is independent of the contingent facts of the world. On the other hand, it follows that these statements do not say anything about the world and thus have no factual content.”

Rudolf Carnap (1891–1970) German philosopher

Source: Carnap’s intellectual biography (1963), p. 25 as cited in: M. J. Cresswell (2010) " Carnap's logic http://apacentral.org/necessity/Cresswell_Carnap.pdf"

World, Thinking, Personality

Quotes about the truth page 11

Quotes about the truth
page 11