Quotes about the truth
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Ambrose Bierce photo

“TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary

Pietro Aretino photo

“I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.”

Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) Italian author, playwright, poet, satirist, and blackmailer

Source: The Works of Aretino: Biography: de Sanctis. The letters, 1926, p. 152

David Bowie photo
Anne Brontë photo

“I wished to tell the truth, for truth always conveys its own moral to those who are able to receive it.”

Anne Brontë (1820–1849) British novelist and poet

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall Volume I

Dan Brown photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Brian K. Vaughan photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."

[Preface to(1794)]”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Source: On Empire, Liberty, and Reform: Speeches and Letters

Richard Dawkins photo

“The truth is more magical - in the best and most exciting sense of the word - than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic: the magic of reality.”

Duke University, 01/03/2012 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYcOoqxuroI&t=54m51s
The Magic Of Reality (2012)
Source: The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
Context: Don’t ever be lazy enough, defeatist enough, cowardly enough to say “I don't understand it so it must be a miracle - it must be supernatural - God did it”. Say instead, that it’s a puzzle, it’s strange, it’s a challenge that we should rise to. Whether we rise to the challenge by questioning the truth of the observation, or by expanding our science in new and exciting directions - the proper and brave response to any such challenge is to tackle it head-on. And until we've found a proper answer to the mystery, it's perfectly ok simply to say “this is something we don't yet understand - but we're working on it”. It's the only honest thing to do. Miracles, magic and myths, they can be fun. Everybody likes a good story. Myths are fun, as long as you don't confuse them with the truth. The real truth has a magic of its own. The truth is more magical, in the best and most exciting sense of the word, than any myth or made-up mystery or miracle. Science has its own magic - the magic of reality.

Milan Kundera photo
Harry Truman photo

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in Esquire, Vol. 76 (1971), also in Truman's Crises : A Political Biography of Harry S. Truman (1980) by Harold Foote Gosnell, p. 9; sometimes paraphrased: Being a politician is like being a piano player in a whorehouse.

Brandon Sanderson photo
Victor Hugo photo

“Morality is truth in full bloom.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Cassandra Clare photo
H.L. Mencken photo
Deb Caletti photo

“Maybe it was wrong, or maybe impossible, but I wanted the truth to be one thing. One solid thing.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Secret Life of Prince Charming

Edgar Lee Masters photo

“If a storyteller worried about the facts - my dear Lucian, how could he ever get at the truth?”

Lloyd Alexander (1924–2007) American children's writer

Source: The Arkadians

Jodi Picoult photo
Cecily von Ziegesar photo
Margaret Atwood photo
Chuck Klosterman photo
Sarah Waters photo
Joseph Campbell photo

“Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness.”

Source: I Capture the Castle

Robert G. Ingersoll photo

“Nothing but truth is immortal.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Source: The Ghosts and Other Lectures

Daniel Handler photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Agatha Christie photo

“For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away…”

Source: After the Funeral (1953)
Context: There were to be no short cuts to the truth. Instead he would have to adopt a longer, but a reasonably sure method. There would have to be conversation. Much conversation. For in the long run, either through a lie, or through truth, people were bound to give themselves away...

Francois Rabelais photo

“Come, pluck up a good heart; speak the truth and shame the devil.”

Author's prologue.
Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Fifth Book (1564)

Alison Goodman photo
Stephen Colbert photo

“I love the truth. It's the facts I'm not a fan of.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor
Junot Díaz photo
Pierre Teilhard De Chardin photo

“Behind one truth there is always yet another.”

Source: The Iron Ring

David Mamet photo

“Always tell the truth. It's the easiest thing to remember.”

David Mamet (1947) American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director
Franz Kafka photo
Thich Nhat Hanh photo

“To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

The Miracle of Mindfulness (1999)
Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation
Context: To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is. A pessimistic attitude can never create the calm and serene smile which blossoms on the lips of Bodhisattvas and all those who obtain the way.

“The truth is, if we become comfortable with who we are rather than who we think we should be, then we will be less insecure.”

Daniel Gottlieb (1939–2010) French rabbi

Source: Learning from the Heart: Lessons on Living, Loving, and Listening

Georges Bataille photo

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

Source: Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille

James Thurber photo

“Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with Man is Man.”

James Thurber (1894–1961) American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright

"The Trouble with Man is Man", The New Yorker; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

John Donne photo

“I did best when I had least truth for my subjects.”

John Donne (1572–1631) English poet

Source: The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Ani DiFranco photo
Shannon Hale photo
J.M. Coetzee photo

“Our lies reveal as much about us as our truths.”

Source: Slow Man (2004)

Nicholas Sparks photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Jane Austen photo
Muhammad Ali photo

“I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Responding to a press conference question as to whether he was a "card-carrying" member of the Black Muslims, as quoted in The New York Times (27 February 1964) http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F4091EF7355D17738DDDAE0A94DA405B848AF1D3; also in Sports Illustrated (9 March 1964).
Context: I believe in Allah and in peace. I don't try to move into white neighborhoods. I don't want to marry a white woman. I was baptized when I was twelve, but I didn't know what I was doing. I'm not a Christian anymore. I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be... I'm free to be what I want.

Charles Darwin photo
Gore Vidal photo
Gretchen Rubin photo

“The First Splendid Truth: To be happy, I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Jacques Lacan photo
E.M. Forster photo
Sarah Dessen photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo
Robert Greene photo
Sylvia Day photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Words are the only bullets in truth’s bandolier. And poets are the snipers.”

Source: Hyperion (1989), Chapter 3 (p. 192)

Aleister Crowley photo

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”

Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist

Source: Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

Robin McKinley photo
Glenn Beck photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Richard Dawkins photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo

“The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer
Brandon Sanderson photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

John Steinbeck photo

“Yeah, I hear the truth. But this is my truth.”

Julie Anne Peters (1952) American writer

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Salman Rushdie photo
Thomas Sowell photo

“There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author
Muhammad Ali photo

“Jokes? There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist
Steven Erikson photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“[The] truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it, ignorance may deride it, malice may distort it, but there it is.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in the House of Commons, May 17, 1916 "Royal Assent" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1916/may/17/royal-assent#column_1578.
Early career years (1898–1929)

“I would have offered you a forest of truth, but you wish to speak of a single leaf”

David Gemmell (1948–2006) British author of heroic fantasy

Source: Fall of Kings

Alan Moore photo
Barbara Kingsolver photo
Jenny Offill photo
Deb Caletti photo
Graham Greene photo