Quotes about the truth
page 24
Source: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead
Source: The Gift
Prologue.
Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)
“Facts do not convey truth. That's a mistake. Facts create norms, but truth creates illumination.”
“Because ultimately only the witness -- and not the actors -- knows the truth (Vyasa to Draupadi)”
Source: The Palace of Illusions
Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16<!-- p. 228-->
Source: Brave New World (1932)
Context: I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and hapiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.
Source: Phantastes
Source: Big Cherry Holler
"Trefusis Blasphemes" radio broadcast, as published in Paperweight (1993)
1990s
Context: I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish.
Source: The Selfish Gene (1976, 1989), Ch. 6. Genesmanship
“Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.”
“An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.”
Source: Brave New World Revisited (1958), Chapter 11 (p. 104)
Source: Meditations
“I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth.”
November, 1933
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
“There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.”
Source: The Shadow of the Wind
“Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
“Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”
“Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.”
"Politics Getting Ready to Jell" <!-- p. 265 -->
The Illiterate Digest (1924)
Context: Every Gag I tell must be based on truth. No matter how much I may exaggerate it, it must have a certain amount of Truth.... Now Rumor travels Faster, but it don't stay put as long as Truth.
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.”
Source: Invisible Monsters
“What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney?”
Source: The Thirteenth Tale
Included as a quotation in The Great Quotations (1977) by George Seldes, p. 35, this appears to be a paraphrase of a summation of arguments of Bruno's speech in a debate at the College of Cambray (25 May 1588) which are not clearly presented as a direct translation of his statements:
: In an inspired speech Bruno, through the interpreter, Jean Hennequin, of Paris, declared the discovery of numberless worlds in the One Infinite Universe. Nothing was more deplorable, declared he, than the habit of blind belief, for of all other things it hinders the mind from recognizing such matters as are in themselves clear and open. It was proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. However, he cautioned that they should not be influenced by the fervor of speech, but by the weight of his argument and the majesty of truth.
:* Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 — 1600 (1913), p. 41
Disputed
“I am a lie who always speaks the truth.”
"La Paquet Rouge" in Opéra (1925)
Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control
Source: Will Grayson, Will Grayson
L'art pour l'art est un vain mot. L'art pour le vrai, l'art pour le beau et le bon, voilà la religion que je cherche....
Letter to Alexandre Saint-Jean, (19 April 1872), published in Calmann Lévy (ed.) Correspondance (1812-1876). Eng. Transl by Raphaël Ledos de Beaufort in Letters of George Sand Vol. III, p. 242
Letter to G. and F. Keats (December 21, 1817)
Letters (1817–1820)
Source: The World as Will and Representation, Vol 1
“Let us now set forth one of the fundamental truths about marriage: the wife is in charge.”
Source: The Hunt for Red October
Source: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Source: Assassin's Apprentice
“The best liars are those who tell the truth most of the time.”
Source: Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage, p. 67
“The truth of human freedom lies in the love that breaks down barriers.”
Source: Lord of the Silver Bow
“A friend tells you what you want to hear; a best friend tells you the truth.”
“The truth is more important than the facts.”
“Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got used to it.”
1910s
Source: A Little Book in C Major (1916)
“Harry: All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”
Deconstructing Harry (1997)
“Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.”
1960s, Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963)
Context: But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime — the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
Source: The Golden Notebook
“It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?”
Source: The Valley of Fear
