Quotes about the truth
page 30

John Dryden photo

“… not judging truth to be in nature better than falsehood, but setting a value upon both according to interest.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

"Plutarch's Lives," Vol 1, Barnes & Noble Inc., 2006, Lysander p. 646
Translation from Greek originalː "τὸ ἀληθὲς οὐ φύσει τοῦ ψεύδους κρεῖττον ἡγούμενος, ἀλλ' ἑκατέρου τῇ χρείᾳ τὴν τιμὴν ὁρίζων."

Paul Auster photo

“The operational sciences hoped to nourish business management, which however largely ignored them, and the latter continues to be undernourished by the business schools which are fairly broad but shallow everywhere. By over focus on short-range financial values, business management in the United States has lost a dozen major markets to the Japanese, added pollution in all its forms, and enriched itself out of all proportion to its value as just one factor of production.
Action science, developed by the social sciences over many years in relative isolation from the applied physical sciences, and which might otherwise have humanized them and made engineering more productive, was doomed to fail by being on one end of the two-culture problem wherein science and the humanities do not even speak the same language.
I could go on listing a few dozen paradigms: art, law, computer software design, medicine, politics, and architecture, each addressed to a certain context, level, or phase, each good in itself, but each limited to the fields of its origin and its purposes. The methodological problem is the same as if, in designing any large system, each subsystem designer were left to design each subsystem to the best requirements he knew. The overall requirement might not be met; overall harmony could not be achieved, and conflict could ensue to cause failure at the system level.
What is envisioned is a new synthesis, a unified, efficient, systems methodology (SM): a multiphase, multi-level, multi-paradigmatic creative problem-solving process for use by individuals, by small groups, by large multi-disciplinary teams, or by teams of teams. It satisfies human needs in seeking value truths by matching the properties of wanted systems, and their parts, to perform harmoniously with their full environments, over their entire life cycles”

Arthur D. Hall (1925–2006) American electrical engineer

Source: Metasystems Methodology, (1989), p.xi-xii, cited in Philip McShane (2004) Cantower VII http://www.philipmcshane.ca/cantower7.pdf

Shunryu Suzuki photo
James Madison photo

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to https://www.loc.gov/resource/mjm.06_0574_0575/?sp=1 Thomas Jefferson (13 May 1798); published in Letters and Other Writings of James Madison (1865), Vol. II, p. 141
1790s

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“803. Antiquity cannot privilege an Error, nor Novelty prejudice a Truth.”

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

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

James K. Morrow photo
Michel Foucault photo
Umberto Eco photo
Báb photo
Marcus Aurelius photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Henry Edward Manning photo

“God knows that I would rather stand in the lowest place within the Truth, than in the highest without it. Nay, outside the Truth the higher the worse. It is only so much more opposition to Truth, so much more propagation of falsehood.”

Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) English Roman Catholic archbishop and cardinal

Letter to Robert Wilberforce (Rome, 15 February 1848); in Edmund Sheridan Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1896), p. 513.

H.V. Sheshadri photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“It is not worth while to consider whether a truth be useful—it is enough that it is a truth.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 167

Jacques-Yves Cousteau photo
Horatio Nelson photo

“Bonaparte has often made his boast, that our fleet would be worn out by keeping the sea, that his was kept in order, and increasing, by staying in port; but he now finds, I fancy, if emperors hear truth, that his fleet suffers more in a night, than ours in one year; however, thank God, the Toulon fleet is got in order again, and I hear the troops embarked, and I hope they will come out to sea in fine weather.”

Horatio Nelson (1758–1805) Royal Navy Admiral

From a letter to Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, written while aboard HMS Victory and dated (14 March 1805), quoted in full in The Naval History of Great Britain from the year 1783 to 1822 by Captain Edward Pelham Brenton (1824), Vol III, p. 406
1800s

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg photo
Patrick Kavanagh photo
Thom Yorke photo
Samuel Butler photo

“Heaven is the work of the best and kindest men and women. Hell is the work of prigs, pedants and professional truth-tellers. The world is an attempt to make the best of both.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Heaven and Hell
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Mahatma Gandhi photo

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

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

Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
1940s

Cesare Pavese photo

“But the real, tremendous truth is this: suffering serves no purpose whatever.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

This Business of Living (1935-1950)

Dennis Kucinich photo
Lauren Anderson (model) photo

“If people thought about the environmental destruction, cruelty to animals, and unsavory-sounding body parts that go into meat hot dogs, they’d be switching to veggie hot dogs faster than you can say ‘inconvenient truth.”

Lauren Anderson (model) (1980) American model

"Playmate to Politicians: Take a Bite (and Cool Down)", PETA.org (17 July 2008) https://www.peta.org/blog/playmate-politicians-take-bite-cool/.

J. Reuben Clark photo

“If we have truth, [it] cannot be harmed by investigation. If we have not truth, it ought to be harmed.”

J. Reuben Clark (1871–1961) Member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

J. Reuben Clark, as recorded by D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983, p. 24

Robert Charles Wilson photo
John Gray photo
Charles Darwin photo
Dashiell Hammett photo
Robert S. Mendelsohn photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Berthe Morisot photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo
John Updike photo
Arthur C. Clarke photo
Francis Bacon photo
Carl Friedrich Gauss photo

“But in our opinion truths of this kind should be drawn from notions rather than from notations.”

About the proof of Wilson's theorem. Disquisitiones Arithmeticae (1801) Article 76

George Gordon Byron photo
Mikha'il Na'ima photo
George William Russell photo
James Frazer photo
Samuel Pepys photo
John Lancaster Spalding photo

“The disinterested love of truth which culture fosters is akin to the unselfishness which is a characteristic of the good.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 212

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Phil Brooks photo

“I really hope that the symbolism isn't lost on you four Superstars in the chamber right now, because it's killing me. Here's four extremely weak individuals that, every day, are locked inside a prison of addiction, like most of these people here today; and now, the four of you are locked inside the Elimination Chamber with me. And be sure, it's not me locked in here with you — it's you locked in here with me. And tomorrow morning, when you're nursing the pain and the wounds that this chamber and myself have caused you, I want you to remember that when your pod door opens and you came out and I defeated you, don't think of it as failure. Think of it as me saving you. [Standing over Rey Mysterio's pod] Think of it as me setting you free.
Punk: [To Undertaker, after elimination R-Truth] You'd better pray that your pod door opens last, 'cause when you come out, I'm gonna make you tap out, just like I did before. [To John Morrison] And I'm gonna prove to you that your decadent rock life will get you nowhere. I'm gonna prove to the world that straight-edge means I'm better than you! For those of you at home, feel free, place your hand on the screen and feel CM Punk flow through you!
Lawler: Matt, did you just put your hand on the screen?
Striker: Yes.
Lawler: Do you feel CM Punk flow through you?
Punk: Nobody can stop me!
Cole: Guys, the sermon's over in [checking the timer] three seconds.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

Elimination Chamber - February 21, 2010
Friday Night SmackDown

Donald J. Trump photo

“I can't apologize for the truth.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015

Mahatma Gandhi photo

“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.”

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

Farewell, p. 453
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

Alfred Kinsey photo
Jerry Coyne photo
James Eastland photo
Báb photo
Adolf Hitler photo
Tanith Lee photo
Horace Mann photo

“You need not tell all the truth, unless to those who have a right to know it all, but let all you tell be truth.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

James Burgh, in The Dignity of Human Nature (1754)
Misattributed

Steven Erikson photo
Harlan Ellison photo
Dan Piraro photo
Orson Scott Card photo

“I’m neutral on lying, seeing as how there’s times when the truth just hurts people.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 2 “Squirrel and Moose” (p. 21).

Roseanne Barr photo
Pope Benedict XVI photo
Ibn Khaldun photo

“Unfortunately, the truth is usually the first casualty in an interaction between two people.”

Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 52

Jimmy Carter photo
Garrison Keillor photo

“Cherish the Minnesota State Fair. Wherever you find beauty and simplicity and truth, know that there is a committee somewhere planning to improve it --- don't let them do it.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

University of Minnesota Alumni Association (UMAA) Annual Meeting Keynote Speech (29 April 1992) UMAA 199204 to 199306 Meeting Minutes http://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/48842/1/199204-199306.pdf

William Ellery Channing photo
Dejan Stojanovic photo

“Description is a story well told already; experience offers truth.”

“Lackadaisical Elements,” p. 93
The Creator (2000), Sequence: “Nostalgic Elements”

Francis S. Collins photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Ralph Steadman photo
William Rowan Hamilton photo
Pete Doherty photo
Richard Realf photo
Anthony Burgess photo

“Men are influenced by big loud empty words, styes which swell the eyelids and impede vision of the truth.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, Here Comes Everybody: An Introduction to James Joyce for the Ordinary Reader (1965)

Henry Fielding photo
Peter Medawar photo
Henry David Thoreau photo

“It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Sunday

Albert Pike photo
Mahendra Chaudhry photo

“What is humility but truthfulness? There is no real difference.”

Walter Hilton (1340–1396) English Augustinian mystic.

Book II, ch. 20 (p. 153)
The Ladder of Perfection (1494)

Baruch Spinoza photo

“In 1663 Spinoza published the only work to which he ever set his name… He had prepared a summary of the second part of Descartes' 'Principles of Philosophy' for the use of a pupil… Certain of Spinoza's friends became curious about this manual and desired him to treat the first part of Descartes' work also in the same manner. This was done within a fortnight and Spinoza was then urged to publish the book, which he readily agreed to do upon condition that one of his friends would revise the language and write a preface explaining that the author did not agree with all the Cartesian doctrine… The contents… [included] an appendix of 'Metaphysical Reflections,' professedly written from a Cartesian point of view, but often giving significant hints of the author's real divergence from Descartes….'On this opportunity,' he writes to Oldenburg, 'we may find some persons holding the highest places in my country… who will be anxious to see those other writings which I acknowledge for my own, and will therefore take such order that I can give them to the world without danger of any inconvenience. If it so happens, I doubt not that I shall soon publish something; if not, I will rather hold my peace than thrust my opinions upon men against the will of my country and make enemies of them.'… The book on Descartes excited considerable attention and interest, but the untoward course of public events in succeeding years was unfavourable to a liberal policy, and deprived Spinoza of the support for which he had looked….
If Spinoza had ever been a disciple of Descartes, he had completely ceased to be so… He did not suppose the geometrical form of statement and argument to be an infallible method of arriving at philosophical truth; for in this work he made use of it to set forth opinions with which he himself did not agree, and proofs with which he was not satisfied. We do not know to what extent Spinoza's manual was accepted or taken into use by Cartesians, but its accuracy as an exposition of Descartes is beyond question. One of the many perverse criticisms made on Spinoza by modern writers is that he did not understand the fundamental proposition cogito ergo sum. In fact he gives precisely the same explanation of it that is given by Descartes himself in the Meditations.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

p, 125
Spinoza: His Life and Philosophy (1880)

Thomas Fuller (writer) photo

“4243. Speak the Truth, and shame the Devil.”

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

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

Roger Ebert photo

“I could list some Japanese films illustrating this, but the last thing the audience for Memoirs of a Geisha wants to see is a more truthful film with less gorgeous women and shabbier production values.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/memoirs-of-a-geisha-2005 of Memoirs of a Geisha (9 December 2005)
Reviews, Two-and-a-half star reviews

“Why do men hug words to their hearts after the living truth has long since fled from them?”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Preface, p. 18, sentence 5.
The Christian Agnostic (1965)

Nigel Cumberland photo

“You might look at someone successful and think they got lucky – a case of being in the right place at the right time perhaps? The truth is, every piece of good fortune is the result of hours, or even years, of hard work and preparation.”

Nigel Cumberland (1967) British author and leadership coach

Your Job-Hunt Ltd – Advice from an Award-Winning Asian Headhunter (2003), Successful Recruitment in a Week (2012) https://books.google.ae/books?idp24GkAsgjGEC&printsecfrontcover&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIGjAA#vonepage&qnigel%20cumberland&ffalse, 100 Things Successful People Do: Little Exercises for Successful Living (2016) https://books.google.ae/books?idnu0lCwAAQBAJ&dqnigel+cumberland&hlen&saX&ved0ahUKEwjF75Xw0IHNAhULLcAKHazACBMQ6AEIMjAE