Quotes about the truth
page 31

“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)

“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

Thinking, Time, Success

“In order that men should embrace the truth — not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition (both pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscured is essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditions sanctified by age and with the habits of the people — not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions — but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions.”

Leo Tolstoy A Letter to a Hindu

Source: A Letter to a Hindu (1908), VI

Men, People, Age, World

“You told me the truth when you said to me once, "There's a sort of wrong that can never be made up for."”

George Eliot book Adam Bede

Adam Bede (1859)

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

As quoted in Bridges to Infinity : The Human Side of Mathematics (1983) by Michael Guillen

Life

“Speak the truth in love, leaving no one in doubt about where you stand. Bear faithful witness. Be gentle as doves, but wise — even cunning — as serpents. Do not compromise your principles — out of fear or even in the hope of advancing worthy goals. Do not fall into the error of believing that a good end justifies a bad means. But do work tirelessly for the best causes — especially life and marriage, but also, and relatedly, to lift up the poor, the downtrodden and the persecuted, both here in the United States and abroad.”

Robert P. George (1955) American legal scholar

2017, Interview with Matthew Bunson (2017)

Love, Life, Marriage, Fear

“Next to the ridicule of denying an evident truth, is that of taking much pains to defend it; and no truth appears to me more evident, than that beasts are endow'd with thought and reason as well as men. The arguments are in this case so obvious, that they never escape the most stupid and ignorant.”

David Hume book A Treatise of Human Nature

Part 3, Section 16
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 1: Of the understanding

Men, Pain, Stupidity, Appearance

“Some people like to talk of intuition as a way of knowing truth; that gut reactions are as good as evidence based facts. It’s a really silly way of thinking…”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

People, Way, Thinking

“The Bible was regarded as not only true, but as the best of all truth. Any new theory advanced, was immediately examined in the light, or rather in the darkness, of revelation, and if according to that test it was false, it was denounced, and the person bringing it forward forced to recant. It would have been a far better course to have discovered every theory found to be in harmony with the Scriptures.”

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

My Reviewers Reviewed (lecture from June 27, 1877, San Francisco, CA)

Light, Personality, Falseness

“It is quite obvious therefore, that the knowledge and prudence of the poor themselves, are absolutely the only means by which any general and permanent improvement in their condition can be effected. They are really the arbiters of their own destiny; and what others can do for themselves. These truths are so important to the happiness of the great mass of society, that every opportunity should be taken of repeating them.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter V, Of the Profits of Capital, Section III, p. 279
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Knowledge, Happiness

“Allow dissent & free media for 6 months in Russia and see what happens. Putin would never risk it because he’s terrified of his own people and the truth, like every dictator.”

Garry Kasparov (1963) former chess world champion

As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/03/is-putin-popular-c/ (2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review 2010s

People

“Be ready for the revelation of the truth.”

Elia M. Ramollah (1973) founder and leader of the El Yasin Community

Flow of Divine Guidance (vol.1)

“The work of the Spirit is to impart life, to implant hope, to give liberty, to testify of Christ, to guide us into all truth, to teach us all things, to comfort the believer, and to convict the world of sin.”

Dwight L. Moody (1837–1899) American evangelist and publisher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 318.

Life, World, Hope, Christ

“The truth is, that the greatest enemies of the doctrine of Jesus are those, calling themselves the expositors of them, who have perverted them to the structure of a system of fancy absolutely incomprehensible, and without any foundation in his genuine words. And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter … But may we hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with this artificial scaffolding, and restore to us the primitive and genuine doctrines of this most venerated reformer of human errors.”

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

Letter http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/jefferson_adams.html to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress) http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/053/0800/0844.jpg 1820s

Hope, Error, Freedom

“Far from poisoning the mind, pornography shows the deepest truth about sexuality, stripped of romantic veneer.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 66

“Women are much more like each other than men: they have, in truth, but two passions, vanity and love; these are their universal characteristics.”

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773) British statesman and man of letters

19 December 1749
Letters to His Son on the Art of Becoming a Man of the World and a Gentleman (1774)

Love, Women, Men, Universe

“Falsehoods which we spurn to-day
Were the truths of long ago.”

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892) American Quaker poet and advocate of the abolition of slavery

Calef in Boston, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Whoever desires that his intellect may grow up to soundness, to healthy vigor, must begin with moral discipline. Reading and study are not enough to perfect the power of thought. One thing above all is needful, and that is, the disinterestedness which is the very soul of virtue. To gain truth, which is the great object of the understanding, I must seek it disinterestedly. Here is the first and grand condition of intellectual progress. I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears on myself. I must follow it, no matter where it leads, what interests it opposes, to what persecution or loss it lays me open, from what party it severs me, or to what party it allies. Without this fairness of mind, which is only another phrase for disinterested love of truth, great native powers of understanding are perverted and led astray.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

Love, Soul, Understanding, Study

“Some people think that macrobiotic philosophy is no more than the teaching of a diet - the eating of brown rice, carrots, and gomashio (sesame salt), others imagine that it is summed up in the statement, "Don't eat cake and sugar."”

George Ohsawa (1893–1966) twentieth century Japanese philosopher

How far from the truth!
Source: Essential Ohsawa - From Food to Health, Happiness to Freedom - Understanding the Basics of Macrobiotics (1994), p. 82

People, Imagination, Thinking

“But the trouble with deep belief is that it costs something. And there is something inside me, some selfish beast of a subtle thing that doesn't like the truth at all because it carries responsibility, and if I actually believe these things I have to do something about them.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Selfishness

“Let me start a different/ analysis by recalling an idea from Max Weber. He characterized cultural modernity as the separation of the substantive reason expressed in religion and metaphysics into three autonomous spheres. They are science, morality and art. These came to be differentiated because the unified world-views of religion and metaphysics fell apart. Since the 18th century, the problems inherited from these older world-views could be arranged so as to fall under specific aspects of validity: truth, normative rightness, authenticity and beauty. They could then be handled as questions of knowledge, or of justice and morality, or of taste. Scientific discourse, theories of morality, Jurisprudence, and the production and criticism of art could in turn be institutionalized. Each domain of culture could be made to correspond to cultural professions in which problems could be dealt with as the concern of special experts. This professionalized treatment of the cultural tradition brings to the fore the intrinsic structures of each of the three dimensions of culture. There appear the structures of cognitive-instrumental, of moral-practical and of aesthetic-expressive rationality, each of these under the control of specialists who seem more adept at being logical in these particular ways than other people are. As a result, the distance grows between the culture of the experts and that of the larger public. What accrues to culture through specialized treatment and reflection does not immediately and necessarily become the property of everyday praxis. With cultural rationalization of this sort, the threat increases that the life-world, whose traditional substance has already been devalued, will become more and more impoverished.”

Manuel Castells (1942) Spanish sociologist (b.1942)

Source: Modernity — An Incomplete Project, 1983, p. 8-9

Life, People, World, Religion

“Whose lines are mottoes of the heart,
Whose truths electrify the sage.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

Ode to the Memory of Burns
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“She [Chantal] did not understand him [Fiodor]. She never could and never would understand him, being as invulnerable in her truthfulness as he in his falseness. And yet, she hated him unconsciously with a jealous hatred — for what other name, alas, could be given to that revolt of her pure conscience, so well armed and, at the same time, so defenceless? She hated him instinctively as though he already possessed the incomparable secret with which to menace her, to menace God Himself.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Source: La joie (Joy) 1929, pp.48–49

God, Hate, Secret, Understanding

“We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff.”

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley (1815–1881) English churchman, Dean of Westminster

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 605.

“(…) Is not meanness also a form of madness? And is not madness the misuse of the mind? Humanity’s problem lies in this misuse of the mind only. All the treasures of nature and spirit are open to man who will use his mind rightly. (…) Fear and greed cause the misuse of the mind. The right use of mind is in the service of love, of life, of truth, of beauty.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Mind
Source: I am That, P.128.

Love, Life, Fear, Beauty

“In highly charged political matters, one person's ambiguity may be another person's truth.”

Richard Mottram (1946) British civil ervant

February 1985, as a prosecution witness in the case against Clive Ponting Norton-Taylor, Richard. 'Sir Richard Mottram http://politics.guardian.co.uk/byers/story/0,11320,656525,00.html, The Guardian (25 February 2002).

Personality

“The episode in Sodom is undoubtedly the earliest account in human history of the entrapment of homosexuals, a strategy widely practiced by the law enforcement agencies of modern Western countries, especially those of the United States. In effect, the men of Sodom were entrapped by two strangers, who in truth were not travelers but angels, that is to say, God’s plain-clothesmen. These agents of the Biblical vice-squad wasted no time punishing the offenders.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 162.

Men, God, Law, Angels

““Knowledge is power.” This is the sentence that dug the grave of philosophy in the nineteenth century. … This sentence brings to an end the tradition of a knowledge that, as its name indicates, was an erotic theory—the love of truth and the truth through love (Liebeswahrheit). … Those who utter the sentence reveal the truth. However, with the utterance they want to achieve more than truth: They want to intervene in the game of power.”

Peter Sloterdijk (1947) German philosopher

Source: Kritik der zynischen Vernunft [Critique of Cynical Reason] (1983), p. xxvii

Love, Game, Knowledge

“I had always claimed to welcome the truth; yet now, in common with most of us, I was resentful of the truth because it called upon me to take an unwelcome course of action.”

Michael Moorcock book The War Hound and the World's Pain

Source: The War Hound and the World's Pain (1981), Chapter 4 (p. 55)

“If truth were left to a market philosophy, there would be no point in continuing to make an argument for which there are no takers, or to ask a question for which there are no answers. The minority community has other grounds to sustain a wholesome discomfort and thereby keeps the door open for solutions not yet found.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

Source: The Priestly Kingdom (1984), p. 99

Communication, Question

“Science is not going to change its commitment to the truth. We can only hope religion changes its commitment to nonsense.”

Victor J. Stenger (1935–2014) American philosopher

[02/19/2013, Science and Religion Cannot Be Reconciled, Huffington Post, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/religion-and-science-_b_2719280.html]

Religion, Hope, Science, Change

“God, who prepares His work for the ages, accomplishes it by the feeblest instruments. It is the method of His providence to produce great results from inconsiderable means. The law which prevades the kingdom of nature is discerned in the history of mankind. Truth makes silent progress, like the water that trickles behind the rocks, and loosens them from the mountain on which they rest. Suddenly the hidden operation is revealed, and a single day suffices to lay bare the work of years, if not of ages.”

John Lanahan (1815–1903)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 389.

God, Age, Law, History

“I cried out. I turned the pages, one after the other, in a frenzy. I could not believe what I saw, would not believe it. For the pages of the book were blank.
Oh, yes, there had been writing, this much I could see, but the inks had faded. Now there were only faint smudges and marks here and there on the yellowness. And I could tell nothing from them…
It came to me, as I walked, how bitter the irony of the Book had been which had said: Herein the Truth. For it had a truth of its own in its bleached barrenness. What was truth except something which faded, lost its shape, grew unreadable and indistinguishable, at last a blank page for men to write on what they wished.”

Tanith Lee book The Birthgrave

Book Three, Part II “The Edge of the Sea”, Chapter 2 (p. 357)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Men, Books

“I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty;
I woke, and found that life was Duty.
Was thy dream then a shadowy lie?
Toil on, poor heart, unceasingly;
And thou shalt find thy dream to be
A truth and noonday light to thee.”

Ellen Sturgis Hooper (1812–1848) American writer

Life a Duty, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Straight is the line of Duty, / Curved is the line of Beauty, / Follow the straight line, thou hall see / The curved line ever follow thee", William Maccall (c. 1830).

Life, Lie, Beauty, Dreams

“Beauty in art is truth bathed in an impression received from nature. I am struck upon seeing a certain place. While I strive for a conscientious imitation, I yet never for an instant lose the emotion that has taken hold of me. Reality is one part of art; feeling completes it... Before any site and any object, abandon yourself to your first impression. If you have really been touched, you will convey to others the sincerity of your emotion.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote from Corot's 'Notebooks', ca. 1856, as quoted in Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. by Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 241
1850s

Beauty, Art, Feeling, Nature

“The truth is, sex doesn't mean that much to me now. It never did, really. It was romance I wanted, kisses and candlelight, that sort of thing. I never did dig sex very much.”

Lana Turner (1921–1995) American actress

Quoted in Life https://books.google.com/books?id=77cRAQAAMAAJ&q=The+truth+is,+sex+doesn't+mean+that+much+to+me+now.+It+never+did,+really.+It+was+romance+I+wanted,+kisses+and+candlelight,+that+sort+of+thing.+I+never+did+dig+sex+very+much.&dq=The+truth+is,+sex+doesn't+mean+that+much+to+me+now.+It+never+did,+really.+It+was+romance+I+wanted,+kisses+and+candlelight,+that+sort+of+thing.+I+never+did+dig+sex+very+much.&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiO79P49ObSAhXIdSYKHQmSBYsQ6AEIGjAA, vol. 7 (1984), p. xxiv. On her marriages

Sex, Kiss

“Every one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts serves to inculcate some truth, to remove some erroneous opinion, to establish proper relations in society, to diminish evil, to train in good manners, or to warn against bad habits. All this depends on three things: opinions, morals, and social conduct. …these three principles suffice for assigning a reason for every one of the Divine commandments.”

Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed

Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.31

Evil, Dependency, Training

“Between the two men, somewhere, a truth is lying, and that is what I try to find.”

Georg Solti (1912–1997) Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor

Arguing that Toscanini and Furtwangler both went to extremes.
Conductors by John L. Holmes (1988) pp 256-261 ISBN 0-575-04088-2

Men, Lying

“They could pray, they had the illusion that a divine plan governed this best of all possible worlds, while I was left in bleak, stormy limbo, dismally aware that the universe makes no sense and that the only universal truth there is is that Entropy Eventually Wins.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Thomas the Proclaimer (1972), Chapter 3, “The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters” (p. 76)

World, Sense, Universe

“Socialism for me was never about nationalization or the power of the state, not just about economics or even politics. It is a moral purpose to life, a set of values, a belief in society, in co-operation, in achieving together what we cannot achieve alone. It is how I try to live my life, how you try to live yours—the simple truths—I am worth no more than anyone else, I am my brother’s keeper, I will not walk by on the other side. We are not simply people set in isolation from one another, face to face with eternity, but members of the same family, same community, same human race. This is my socialism and the irony of all our long years in opposition is that those values are shared by the vast majority of the British people.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

As quoted in "Socialism is So Hot Right Now" https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/socialism-hot-right-now/ (17 September 2018), by Jonah Goldberg, Commentary 1990s

Life, People, Family, Communication

“The history of Acadians has never been written down as see by its people. Its been written by historians from outside. These historians sometimes had reason not to write the truth or didn't know the truth or didn't know the small things which become the big things, the inside story, what we in France call la petit histoire. History is made by the kings and lords, But la petit histoire is made by the people.”

Antonine Maillet (1929) Canadian writer and scholar

Antonine Maillet, Acadian author quoted by Isabel Vincent in the Toronto Globe and Mail, June 24, 1989. Source: Dictionary of Canadian Quotations by Robert Columbo. (Toronto: Stoddart, 1991) p. 3

People, History

“Grant us Thy truth to make us free,
And kindling hearts that burn for Thee,
Till all Thy living altars claim
One holy light, one heavenly flame.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

"Lord Of All Being" (1848).

Light, Heart

“(…) Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life, given to search for truth and to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Clean, well-ordered life
Source: "I am That." P.31.

Life, People, Fear, Search

“So the Free Man is Free. Absolutely Free. Not just a little bit free. Not cut off from all of this. That's not the nature of His Freedom—humorlessness relative to the world still, non-pleasure still. No, in His Freedom He becomes capable of humor in life, capable of pleasure, or enjoyment, in the forms that are arising. That is the fullness of God-Realization. All of the humorless, pleasureless forms of experience that are often associated with God-Realization in the traditions are not God-Realization in Truth.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization 1975

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/slg.php

World, Pleasure, Nature, Life

“The apparent discrepancy in the Gospel narrative aroused no doubt in my mind as to the literal truth of either of the texts. Indeed, my falling away from grace was not occasioned by any intellectual qualms; I accepted the theology of the Plymouth Brethren. In fact, I could hardly conceive of the existence of people who might doubt it. I simply went over to Satan's side; and to this hour I cannot tell why.”

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

Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley (1929), Ch. 5.

People

“Too many crucial things about this country turn out to be highly recommended because they are 'invisible'. There is the 'hidden hand' of the free market, the 'unwritten' Constitution, the 'invisible earnings' of the financial service sector, the 'magic' of monarchy and the 'mystery' of the Church and its claim to the interpretation of revealed truth. When we do get as far as the visible or the palpable, too much of it is deemed secret. How right it is that senior ministers, having kissed hands with the monarch, are sworn to the cult of secrecy by 'The Privy Council Oath'. How right it is that our major foreign alliance - the 'special relationship' with the United States - is codified by no known treaty and regulated by no known Parliamentary instrument.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

1990s, The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain's Favourite Fetish

Secret, Kiss, Country

“If we admit the existence of the prophetic mission, by putting the idea of possibility, which is in fact ignorance, in place of certainty, and make miracles a proof of the truth of man who claims to be a prophet it becomes necessary that they should not be used by a person, who says that they can be performed by others than prophets, as the Mutakallimun do.”

Averroes book On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

Part 2: The Advent of the Prophets; Opening sentence
On the Harmony of Religions and Philosophy

Idea, Personality

“It is impossible to read the works of the economists who since the time of Smith have endeavored to build up and elucidate the science of political economy without seeing how, over and over again, they stumble over the law of wages without once recognizing it. Yet, "if it were a dog it would bite them!" Indeed, it is difficult to resist the impression that some of them really saw this law of wages, but, fearful of the practical conclusions to which it would lead, preferred to ignore and cover it up, rather than use it as the key to problems which without it are so perplexing. A great truth to an age which has rejected and trampled on it, is not a word of peace, but a sword!”

Henry George book Progress and Poverty

Progress and Poverty (1879)

Age, Fear, Peace, Law

“The elite are the men of religion, political leaders, media and press people, and teachers. Everyone can understand the truth and know what is right. These have the responsibility of showing this right and truth to the people. They should not remain silent…. It is the responsibility of people to look for right and truth. As they hear me now, they should not accept everything I say. Even the masses of Hezbollah and the resistance should not do so…. Forget what my faith is and what yours is. Hear what I say and see what I do and hear what others say and see what they do, and then decide.”

Hassan Nasrallah (1960) Secretary General of Hezbollah

Interview with Al-Manar television (31 October 2006)
Quote, 2006

Men, People, Faith, Religion

“Science condemns itself to failure when, yielding to the infatuation of the serious, it aspires to attain being, to contain it, and to possess it; but it finds its truth if it considers itself as a free engagement of thought in the given, aiming, at each discovery, not at fusion with the thing, but at the possibility of new discoveries; what the mind then projects is the concrete accomplishment of its freedom.”

Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity

Pt. III : The Positive Aspect of Ambiguity, Ch. 3 : Freedom and Liberation
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)

Failure, Freedom, Science

“But in view of the lessons of the years of contest that have crowned the nation with victory, with the inspirations of liberty and truth brightly lighting the pathway of the people, who can doubt the equity of their voice? The nations of the earth must not be allowed to point at us as pitiful examples of weak selfishness. In the exigencies of this hour, our duty must be so done that the eternal scrolls of justice will ever bear record of the nobility of the nation's heart Animated, inspired, generous, fearless, in the work of liberty and truth, long will the Republic live, a bulwark of God's immutable justice.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Oration at Ravenna, Ohio (1865)

God, People, Justice, Light

“We have defined freedom in the West as the freedom to choose between options and preferences. That’s not primal freedom. That’s a secondary or even tertiary freedom. The primal freedom is the freedom to be the self, the freedom to live in the truth despite all circumstances. That’s what great religion offers us. That’s what real prayer offers us. That’s why the saints could be imprisoned and not lose their souls. They could be put down and persecuted like Jesus and still not lose their joy, their heart, or their perspective. Secular freedom is having to do what you want to do. Religious freedom is wanting to do what you have to do.”

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

Source: Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer (1999), p. 93

Religion, Soul, Freedom, Heart

“A coroner must be humane, fair and fearless in obtaining the truth. That is why I have put my head above the parapet.”

Montague Levine (1922–2013) British surgeon

Quoted in Daily Telegraph obituary http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9878394/Sir-Montague-Levine.html

“Subjective reason … is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 12.

Religion, Way, Science, Fight

“The creation of a legal eligibility allowing the grant of an amnesty for treason is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Bill was supposed to be a search for the truth behind the tragedy of 2000, but the Bill never once mentions the word "truth."”

Graeme Leung Fijian lawyer

16 June 2005 parliamentary submission

“Everything in this world is ‘PHURO’ – transient. It has no reality. True reality is to proceed on the path of truth, to keep the company of saintly people, and to render service to men.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

Inspiration
Source: The Teachings of Babaji, 31 August 1983.

Men, People, World, Reality

“The search for truth is more precious than its possession.”

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

This quote does appear in Einstein's 1940 essay "The Fundaments of Physics" which can be found in his book Out of My Later Years (1950), but Einstein does not claim credit for it, instead calling it "Lessing's fine saying".
Misattributed

“The Turkish and Greek tyrants had reduced the Bulgarian people to the lowest level of human culture, but their Bulgarians could not root out. Under the consciousness of the people there were still embryos of national sense. The Bulgarian people realized that it was a people and had its own independent state and even managed to win its people's church. Russia freed a part of the Bulgarian people. The liberated Bulgarians were called for autonomous rule, but they were divided into two divisions … One of them, called Slavophiles, was of the opinion that Bulgaria should be placed under Russia's protectorate because it could not be itself ruled … The other party, which was called patriots, was for an independent Bulgaria. The fierce struggles between these two parties fill the history of Bulgaria from liberation to the world war. Russophiles grew up with various modern trends, such as Communists, Socialists, and other truths that did not give birth to tobacco and native tobacco. Fatherland was considered a vice for backwardness. It's hard for him to say he's a patriot.”

Gancho Tsenov (1870–1949) Bulgarian historian

Source: Ziezi ex quo Vulgares, "Забравеният д-р Ганчо Ценов" http://ziezi.net/cenov.html

War, People, World, History

“The Vedic approach,” concludes Ram Swarup, “is perhaps the best. It gives unity without sacrificing diversity. In fact, it gives a deeper unity and a deeper diversity beyond the power of ordinary monotheism and polytheism. It is one with the yogic and the mystic approach… In this deeper approach, the distinction is not between a true One God and false Many Gods; it is between a true way of worship and a false way of worship. Wherever there is sincerity, truth and self-giving in worship, that worship goes to the true altar by whatever name we may designate it and in whatever way we may conceive it. But if it is not desireless, if it has ego, falsehood, conceit and deceit in it, then it is unavailing though it may be offered to the most true God, theologically speaking.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

The World As Revelation: Names of Gods (1980)

God, Way, Falseness, Sincerity

“Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.”

Francis Bacon book Essays

Of Truth
Essays (1625)

“The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948), Ch. 3, Part 2: The Happy Variety of Minds, p. 125.

Men, Way, Nature, Knowledge

“And when you maintain this sense of peace and you live by truth, by integrity, these things don't bother me. It doesn't. I have been experiencing moribund type experiences most of my life. I could have died many a times. I could have died when I was shot. I could have died when I was shot at by the police and rival gang members. There were many opportunities for me to die. Of course, I don't want to die. I mean, after my redemption I have what I consider to be a joie de vivre, so, you know, I have an enjoyment, a love for life. So that’s why I can calmly sit here and speak to you or anyone else with peace in my heart and peace in my mind. I don't get rattled. Nothing can rattle me. Nothing will ever rattle me. I have been rattled the majority of my life.”

Stanley Tookie Williams (1953–2005) American criminal

Democracy Now! interview (2005)

Love, Life, Peace, Sense

“There is no depth of life without a way to depth, no truth without a way to truth.”

Ruth Nanda Anshen (1900–2003) American philosopher, author and editor

The Mystery of Consciousness: A Prescription for Human Survival, pg. 108 (1994)

Life, Way

“Truth's like a dollar-piece, it's got two sides, and both are wanted to make it good currency.”

John Buchan book The Path of the King

Source: The Path of the King (1921), Ch. XIV "The End of the Road", I

“Religion is another name for the realization of Truth. It consists in becoming and being one with the Supreme Being. Doctrines and dogmas are only details of a secondary nature.”

Swami Narayanananda (1902–1988) Indian guru

Source: A Practical Guide to Samadhi (1957), p. 143

Religion, Nature

“One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.”

William Hazlitt book The Spirit of the Age

"Jeremy Bentham http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Spirit_of_the_Age/Jeremy_Bentham The Spirit of the Age (1825)

Nature

“The truth of what I have so often inculcated, that it is the "steady, painstaking, likely-to-do-good" man who in the long run wins the race against those who now and then give a brilliant flash and, as Shakespeare says, "straight are cold again."”

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) (1800–1868) Anglican clergyman, scholar

As quoted in The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 55

“Let us never imagine that faith can ever be furthered by suppressing doubt, let alone by suppressing evidence. All truth is one, and religion must be as eager as science to know the truth as far as man can perceive it. If something we have treasured as truth is really contradicted by unanswerable evidence, then in the name of the God of truth we must part with it however venerable it may be. Let us never suppose that we can take over faith from our parents without examination, or believe anything merely because another says it is true. But let us not be content with a static agnosticism which never rouses itself to make inquiry. Let us examine the evidence and then in complete loyalty to its trend make a leap both of intellect and will, and, committing ourselves, acting as if all were established, try out in life the faith that carries us on wings after the hard road of fact and reason stops.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.231

Life, God, Faith, Religion

“The Reverend Pullman sat on the opposite side of the bench, wearing clerical garb and one of those unctuous smiles that proclaims a monopoly on truth.”

Jack McDevitt (1935) American novelist, Short story writer

Source: Academy Series - Priscilla "Hutch" Hutchins, Odyssey (2006), Chapter 35 (p. 331)

Smile

“We should teach our children to make friends with us, to communicate all their thoughts to us … by this we find many opportunities of teaching them important truths, almost without knowing.”

Henry Kirke White (1785–1806) English poet

Letter his White's aunt, 6 January 1800.
Letters

Children, Communication

“Be careful to have truthful friends and try to obtain them, for they are your support when you are in welfare, and your advocator when you have misfortune.”

Ja'far al-Sadiq (702–765) Muslim religious person

Majlisi, Bihārul Anwār, vol.74, p. 187
General Quotes

Support

“All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Faith, Falseness

“The truth is never taken
From another.
One carries it always
By oneself.
Katsu!”

Tetto Giko (1295–1369)

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

“Once I was young and had so much more orientation and could talk with nervous intelligence about everything and with clarity and without as much literary preambling at this; in other words this is the story of an unself-confident man, at the same time of an egomaniac, naturally, facetious won't do−just to start at the beginning and let the truth seep out, that's what I'll do-.”

Jack Kerouac book The Subterraneans

Source: The Subterraneans (1958), Chapter One

Confidence, Intelligence, Nature, Time

“Here’s why the life of Muhammad [and Jesus] matters: Contrary to what many secularists would have us believe, religions are not entirely determined (or distorted) by the faithful over time. The lives and words of the founders remain central, no matter how long ago they lived. The idea that believers shape religion is derived, instead, from the fashionable 1960s philosophy of deconstructionism, which teaches that written words have no meaning other than that given to them by the reader. Equally important, it follows that if the reader alone finds meaning, there can be no truth (and certainly no religious truth); one person’s meaning is equal to another’s. Ultimately, according to deconstructionism, we all create our own set of “truths,” none better, or worse than any other. Yet for the religious man or woman on the streets of Chicago, Rome, Jerusalem, Damascus, Calcutta, and Bangkok, the words of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad, Krishna, and Buddha mean something far greater than any individual’s rendering of them. And even to the less-than-devout reader, the words of these great religious leaders are clearly not equal in their meaning.”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam, Chapter 1, page 3 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=_7RD2jwMU2wC&printsec=frontcover&hl=pt-BR#v=onepage&q&f=false

Life, Faith, Religion, Idea

“It is more reasonable to remove error from truth, than to venerate error because it is mix'd with truth.”

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657–1757) French writer, satirist and philosopher of enlightenment

p, 125
The History of Oracles, and the Cheats of the Pagan Priests (1688)

Error

“Relying on words to lead you to the truth is like relying on an incomplete formal system to lead you to the truth. A formal system will give you some truths, but as we shall soon see, a formal system, no matter how powerful—cannot lead to all truths.”

Douglas Hofstadter book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid

Source: Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (1979), Chapter 9: "Mumon and Gödel"

“Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated too highly. Certainly all the evils of the government were therein brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now not merely notorious but, so to speak, judicially established, that among the governing lords of Rome everything was treated as venal--the treaty of peace and the right of intercession, the rampart of the camp and the life of the soldier; the African had said no more than the simple truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself. But the whole external and internal government of this period bore the same stamp of miserable baseness. In our case the accidental fact, that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better accounts than the other contemporary military and political events, shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and every intrepid patriot had long been in a position to support by facts. The circumstance, however, that they were now furnished with some fresh, still stronger and still more irrefutable, proofs of the baseness of the restored senatorial government--a baseness only surpassed by its incapacity--might have been of importance, had there been an opposition and a public opinion with which the government would have found it necessary to come to terms. But this war had in fact exposed the corruption of the government no less than it had revealed the utter nullity of the opposition. It was not possible to govern worse than the restoration governed in the years 637-645; it was not possible to stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the Roman senate in 645: had there been in Rome a real opposition, that is to say, a party which wished and urged a fundamental alteration of the constitution, it must necessarily have now made at least an attempt to overturn the restored senate. No such attempt took place; the political question was converted into a personal one, the generals were changed, and one or two useless and unimportant people were banished. It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the rotten curule chairs. In this respect the coming forward of Marius was significant, just because it was in itself so utterly unwarranted. If the burgesses had stormed the senate-house after the defeat of Albinus, it would have been a natural, not to say a proper course; but after the turn which Metellus had given to the Numidian war, nothing more could be said of mismanagement, and still less of danger to the commonwealth, at least in this respect; and yet the first ambitious officer who turned up succeeded in doing that with which the older Africanus had once threatened the government,(16) and procured for himself one of the principal military commands against the distinctly- expressed will of the governing body. Public opinion, unavailing in the hands of the so-called popular party, became an irresistible weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome. We do not mean to say”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 3, pg 163, Translated by W.P. Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 3

Life, War, People, Peace

“Don't try to tear down other people's religion about their ears, Build up your own perfect structure of truth, and invite your listeners to enter in and enjoy it's glories.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

The Life Story of Brigham Young, p. 149-150
Attributed

People, Religion, Tear, Perfection

“Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

In his Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: 1855)

Study

“The desire for truth so prominent in the quest of science, a reaching out of the spirit from its isolation to something beyond, a response to beauty in nature and art, an Inner Light of conviction and guidance—are these as much a part of our being as our sensitivity to sense impressions?”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Source: Science and the Unseen World (1929), Ch. IV, p.42-43

Beauty, Art, Nature, Sense

“I am interested in telling my particular truth as I have seen it.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

Quoted in her obituary in The Guardian (7 December 2000)

“I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.”

Albert Finney (1936–2019) English actor

Reply when asked if he thought he was a lot like the character he plays in Big Fish in an interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).

Lie, Thinking

“She had expected to encounter death as a kind of existential depth and had been disappointed. But maybe there was a deeper truth there. Maybe profundity actually is a mode of disappointment. The rhythm of the climax—joy and despair, sex and pain—is of course the currency of life. Death can only ever be a sort of anticlimactic belatedness.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 3, “The Utility of Dreaming” (pp. 119-120).
Jack Glass (2012)

Life, Death, Pain, Sex

“What is commonly called liberality is the condition of being open, available to all truths. But this is precisely eclecticism, confusion, the absence of integrity.”

David L. Norton (1930–1995) American philosopher

Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 9

“I remember seeing how Layne [Staley] reacted to Andy [Andrew Wood] dying from drugs, and I think that he was scared possibly. And I think he also reacted the same way when Kurt [Cobain] shot himself. They were really good friends. And yet it didn’t stop him. But for me, if I think about the evolution of my life as it appears in songs for example, Higher Truth is a great example of a record I wouldn’t have been able to write [when I was younger], and part of that is in essence because there was a period of time there where I didn’t expect to be here. And now not only do I expect to be here, and I’m not going anywhere, but I’ve had the last 12 years of my life being free of substances to kind of figure out who the substance-free guy is, because he’s a different guy. Just by brain chemistry, it can’t be avoided. I’m not the same, I don’t think the same, I don’t react the same. And my outlook isn’t necessarily the same. My creative endeavours aren’t necessarily the same. And one of the great things about that is it enabled me to kind of keep going artistically and find new places and shine the light into new corners where I hadn’t really gone before. And that feels really good. But it’s also bittersweet because I can’t help but think, what would Jeff be doing right now, what would Kurt be doing right now, what would Andy be doing? Something amazing, I’m sure of it. And it would be some music that would challenge me to lift myself up, something that would be continually raising the bar so that I would work harder too, in the same way they affected me when they were alive basically.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if there was a lesson to be learned from his friends' deaths caused by substance abuse and if it was not enough to scare everyone ** The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273, Solo career Era

Life, Music, Way, Guy

“Those who work at a thing heart and soul not only achieve success in it but through their absorption in that they also realize the supreme truth—Brahman. Those who work at a thing with their whole heart receive help from God.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

God, Soul, Success, Help

“Habit with him was all the test of truth,
It must be right: I’ve done it from my youth.”

George Crabbe (1754–1832) English poet, surgeon, and clergyman

The Borough (1810), Letter iii, "The Vicar", line 138.

Youth

“I don’t expect any conservatives to recognize the truth of Obama’s fundamental conservatism for at least a couple of decades—perhaps only after a real progressive presidency. In any case, today they are too invested in painting him as the devil incarnate in order to frighten grassroots Republicans into voting to keep Obama from confiscating all their guns, throwing them into FEMA re-education camps, and other nonsense that is believed by many Republicans. But just as they eventually came to appreciate Bill Clinton’s core conservatism, Republicans will someday see that Obama was no less conservative.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

2010s, Obama is a Republican (2014)

Education, Painting

“Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself. They celebrate their union by the highest service of truth.”

Otto Weininger book Sex and Character

Logik und Ethik aber sind im Grunde nur eines und das-selbe.
Pflicht gegen sich selbst. Sie feiern ihre Vereinigung im höchsten Werte der Wahrheit...
Source: Sex and Character (1903), p. 159.

“In any case, only someone miraculously innocent of history could believe that competition among ideas could result in the triumph of truth. Certainly ideas compete with one another, but the winners are normally those with power and human folly on their side. When the medieval Church exterminated the Cathars, did Catholic memes prevail over the memes of heretics? If the Final Solution had been carried to a conclusion, would that have demonstrated the inferiority of Hebrew memes?”

John Gray book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals

The Human: Truth and Consequences (p. 26-7)
Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002)

History, Idea

“Why do they want to disarm the people? Well, they want to disarm the people on the assumption that we are not responsible enough to be trusted with the means to defend ourselves--regardless of the truth that our Founders thought that this is an essential prerequisite and precondition of liberty.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Rally in Idaho Falls, Idaho, May 12, 2000. http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/speeches/00_05_12idahofalls.htm. 2000

People

“Whoever has even once become notorious by base fraud, even if he speaks the truth, gains no belief.”

Phaedrus book Fables

Book I, fable 10, line 1.
Fables

Fraud

“Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.”

Pythagoras (-585–-495 BC) ancient Greek mathematician and philosopher

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 592

Men, God, Soul, Light