Quotes about the truth
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“If your life truths have to be protected like some people keep their couches in plastic then ciao. have a nice life. if we bump into eachoter at Target, i'm the one buying the sour gummy worms and thats all you need to know about me.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

Life, People

“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 book Travels with My Aunt

Travels with My Aunt (1969)

Lie

“At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.”

Alasdair MacIntyre (1929) Scottish philosopher

Source: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory

Lie, Thinking

“And this is the forbidden truth, the unspeakable taboo - that evil is not always repellent but frequently attractive; that it has the power to make of us not simply victims, as nature and accident do, but active accomplices.”

Joyce Carol Oates (1938) American author

Nature, Evil

“Don't ask me nothin' about nothin'. I just might tell you the truth.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Song lyrics, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Outlaw Blues

“Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Sun

“The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Search, Parting

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, early leader in the civil rights mo…

Way, Light

“And when you say the truth you get stronger.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“All we can do is go around telling the truth.”

Carson McCullers book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

“In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.”

Dean Koontz book Breathless

Source: Breathless

Love, Age, Universe

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Change

“The big truth for men is that often we have to leave home in the first half of life before we can return home at a later stage and find our soul there.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Life, Men, Home, Soul

“Sometimes lies were more dependable than the truth.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Dependency

“To be truthful i am not entirely sure what people mean when they talk of happiness. There are moments of joy and laughter, the comfort of friendship, but enduring happiness? If it exists i have not found it”

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

Friendship, People, Laughter, Joy

“Hard truths can be dealt with, triumphed over, but lies will destroy your soul.”

Patricia Briggs book Moon Called

Source: Moon Called

Soul

“Do you know that every great thing in the history of art and every beautiful thing in life is actually what you call nasty or has been caused by feelings that you would call nasty? By passion, by love, by hatred, by truth. Do you know that?”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Love, Life, Beauty, Art

“One creature's truth is another's lie. (Scroom of Strix Struma)”

Kathryn Lasky (1944) American children's writer

Source: The Outcast

Lie

“i Believe In The Fire Of Love And The Sweat Of Truth”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Love

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms”

Robert A. Heinlein book Starship Troopers

Source: Starship Troopers

History, Thinking, Freedom, Forgetting

“There can be no beauty if it is paid for by human injustice, nor truth that passes over injustice in silence, nor moral virtue that condones it.”

Tadeusz Borowski book This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Source: This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

Beauty, Silence

“Over time, hidden truths morph in the dark soil of deceit into something much worse.”

Patti Callahan Henry American writer

Source: Between The Tides

Time

“It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Men, Faith, Courage, Thinking

“The heart is an artist that paints over what profoundly disturbs it, leaving on the canvas a less dark, less sharp version of the truth.”

Dean Koontz book Forever Odd

Source: Forever Odd

Heart, Painting

“Misunderstanding is my cornerstone. It's everyone's, come to think of it. Illusions mistaken for truth are the pavement under our feet.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Thinking

“Faith is universal. Our specific methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Some of us pray to Jesus, some of us go to Mecca, some of us study subatomic particles. In the end we are all just searching for truth, that which is greater than ourselves.”

Dan Brown book Angels & Demons

Source: Angels & Demons

Faith, Search, Understanding, Study

“Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don’t have to, in a situation where telling them will change nothing.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Change

“I have always been afraid… Always been pretending to follow you closely, alwyas been pretending to sharpen my teeth, when the truth is, I am… scared to death just treading on your shadow.”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Death

“Love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.
A Brave and Startling Truth.”

Maya Angelou book A Brave and Startling Truth

A Brave and Startling Truth (1995)

Love

“The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Life, Children, Age

“In my heart I know the truth, but my mind cannot accept the reality of what this all means.”

Loung Ung (1970) American academic

Source: First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers

Reality, Heart

“Faith is ultimately a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts by the Holy Spirit”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Source: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 Vols

God, Faith, Knowledge, Heart

“The truth is that I hate to think about other people reading my books," Miranda said. "It's like watching someone go through the box of private stuff that I keep under my bed.”

Madeleine L'Engle book A Wrinkle in Time

Source: A Wrinkle in Time

Hate, People, Books, Thinking

“Truth, she thought. As terrible as death. But harder to find.”

Philip K. Dick book The Man in the High Castle

Source: The Man in the High Castle

Death

“… nothing in the world is harder than convincing someone of an unfamiliar truth.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

World

“It is always better to live the truth than to live a lie. And that lie would have kept him alone forever. He may have had nearly nothing for 5 years, but now he can have everything. A boy who looks like that… Magnus.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Lie, Boy

“It's always better to live the truth than to live a lie.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Lie

“The truth is that the universe has been answering you all of your life, but you cannot receive the answers unless you are awake.”

Rhonda Byrne book The Secret

Source: The Secret

Life, Universe

“We wish to find the truth, no matter where it lies. But to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Imagination

“The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

World

“the truth about forever is that it is happening right now”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

“I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Fear, Knowledge

“I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.”

William James book The Varieties of Religious Experience

Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Source: 1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
Context: I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

Fear, Lovers

“The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

People

“It is a curious truth that many cats enjoy warmer, more convivial, even affectionate relationships with humans than they could ever do with fellow felines.”

Bruce Fogle (1944) veterinarian and author

Cats

“Real devotion is an unbroken receptivity to the truth. Real devotion is rooted in an awed and reverent gratitude, but one that is lucid, grounded, and intelligent.”

Sogyal Rinpoche book The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Source: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Intelligence, Gratitude

“Having eyes, but not seeing beauty; having ears, but not hearing music; having minds, but not perceiving truth…These are the things to fear…”

Tetsuko Kuroyanagi (1933) Japanese actress

Fear, Beauty, Music

“The unconscious wants truth. It ceases to speak to those who want something else more than truth.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: On Lies, Secrets, and Silence: Selected Prose, 1966-1978

“I suspect the truth is that we are waiting, all of us, against insurmountable odds, for something extraordinary to happen to us.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Waiting

“… politics determine who has the power, not who has the truth.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

The Australian Financial Review, 6 September 2010, p. 15, "Time for Obama to abandon caution". Also seen in the Sacramento Bee http://www.sacbee.com/2010/09/04/3004829/obama-should-aim-high-on-stimulus.html

“Real power comes not from hate, but from truth.”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Hate

“Error can point the way to truth, while empty-headedness can only lead to more empty-headedness or to a career in politics.”

Barry Hughart book Bridge of Birds

Source: Bridge of Birds

Way, Error

“The truth is I'm getting old, I said. We already are old, she said with a sigh. What happens is that you don't feel it on the inside, but from the outside everybody can see it.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Source: Memories of My Melancholy Whores

Feeling

“The truth is… you think what people want you to think.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

People, Thinking

“The search for truth takes you where the evidence leads you, even if, at first, you don't want to go there.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

Source: Forged: Writing in the Name of God

“You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you.”

Philip Roth book Portnoy's Complaint

Source: Portnoy's Complaint

Love

“She whispered, 'C'etait la Verite?' Was that Verity? Or perhaps she just meant, Was that the truth? Was it true? Did any of it really happen? Were the last three hours real? 'Yes,' I whispered back. 'Oui. C'etait la verite.”

Elizabeth Wein book Code Name Verity

Source: Code Name Verity

“That is surely the truth, at least for now. But perhaps you have not noticed: the truth is forever changing.”

Kate DiCamillo The Magician's Elephant

Source: The Magician's Elephant

Change

“Keep the company of those who seek the truth- run from those who have found it”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

“Dear me. Such harsh truths so early in the morning cannot be good for the digestion.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“When a person sets a thing in motion, there's a feeling of unease, almost regret, until you learn the truth.”

Nicholas Sparks book Dear John

Source: Dear John

Feeling, Learning, Personality

“truth is that which makes a people certain, clear, and strong.”

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) German philosopher

People, Strong

“The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Love, Change

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1

Wise, Life, Life

“He learned to live with the truth. Not to accept it, but to live with it.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Learning

“Because for all the changes, some things were immutable truths: friendship transcends all barriers, understanding trumps fear, and great power can always be surmounted by determination.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: The Witch With No Name

Friendship, Fear, Understanding, Change

“And perhaps in this is the whole difference; perhaps all the wisdom, and all truth, and all sincerity, are just compressed into that inappreciable moment of time in which we step over the threshold of the invisible.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Wisdom, Time, Sincerity

“The repeated lies become history, but they don't necessarily become the truth.”

Colum McCann book Let the Great World Spin

Source: Let the Great World Spin (2009), Book One: A Fear of Love

History

“Strong relationships are not rocked by a truth that is grounded by resolute monogamy.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Strong

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

Life, Home, Solitude, Time

“The Truth is in the prolouge.
Death to the romantic fool.,
the expert in solitary confinement.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda

Death, Fools

“In truth, I wanted her to read my mind so I didn't have to stoop to the womanly art of articulation.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

Art, Reading

“The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

Source: Juliet, Naked

Life

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with telling the truth. I know it isn’t fashionable.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Fashion, Thinking

“Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.”

Edward Albee (1928–2016) American playwright

Saturday Review (4 May 1966)

Reality

“Not that I’ve ever feared a fight or backed down from one –(Wren)
That’s the truth. I swear he’s half beta fish. He’d fight his own reflection to prove a point. (Maggie)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Unleash the Night

Fear, Fish, Fight

“Truth and love will overcome lies and hatred.”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Love

“The truth is that I love Simon like I should love you, and I wish that he was my brother and you weren't." - Clary”

Cassandra Clare book City of Ashes

Source: City of Ashes

Love

“Truth was a changing display in a shop window, manipulated by hands when you weren’t looking, alluring and ever out of reach.”

Colson Whitehead book The Underground Railroad

Source: The Underground Railroad

Change

“Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

Memory

“On my life, Magnus, I swear this is the truth: your father is a Norse god. Now, hurry. We're in a twenty- minute parking spot.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Life, God

“By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.”

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

“Some of the most profound truths about us are things that we stop saying in the middle.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“The truth doesn't always make a good story, does it?”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

“If men are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Men

“If you never tell anyone the truth about yourself, eventually you start to forget.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Forgetting

“But what is Hope? Nothing but the paint on the face of Existence; the least touch of truth rubs it off, and then we see what a hollow-cheeked harlot we have got hold of.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Hope, Painting

“if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.”

Amy Hempel (1951) Short story writer

Source: The Collected Stories

Life, Past

“Some things are only real because they represent what we think. When we learn the truth and think it, the old reality is no longer real to us and loses its hold on us. The truth sets us free.”

C. Terry Warner American writer

Source: Bonds That Make Us Free: Healing Our Relationships, Coming to Ourselves

Thinking, Reality, Learning

“The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Essay, written under the pseudonym "Candidus," in The Boston Gazette (14 October 1771) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2092, later published in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (1865) by William Vincent Wells, p. 425

Freedom