Quotes about the truth
page 31

Leo Tolstoy photo
George Eliot photo
Borís Pasternak photo

“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

Robert P. George photo
David Hume photo
Derren Brown photo

“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)

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo
Garry Kasparov photo

“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

Elia M. Ramollah photo

“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)

Dwight L. Moody photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Camille Paglia photo

“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

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield photo

“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)

John Greenleaf Whittier photo

“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)

William Ellery Channing photo
George Ohsawa photo

“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

Manuel Castells photo

“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

Thomas Campbell photo

“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)

Georges Bernanos photo
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley photo

“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.

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo

“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).

Thomas Szasz photo
Peter Sloterdijk photo
Michael Moorcock photo
John Howard Yoder photo
Victor J. Stenger photo

“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]

Tanith Lee photo
Ellen Sturgis Hooper photo

“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).

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot photo
Lana Turner photo

“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

Maimónides photo
Georg Solti photo

“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

Robert Silverberg photo
Tony Blair photo
Oliver Wendell Holmes photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Adi Da Samraj photo
Aleister Crowley photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Averroes photo
Henry George photo
Hassan Nasrallah photo
Simone de Beauvoir photo
James A. Garfield photo
Richard Rohr photo

“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

Max Horkheimer photo
Albert Einstein photo

“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

Gancho Tsenov photo
Francis Bacon photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Stanley Tookie Williams photo

“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)

John Buchan photo

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

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

William Hazlitt photo

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

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

Charles Dodgson (archdeacon) photo
Jack McDevitt photo

“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)

Henry Kirke White photo
Ja'far al-Sadiq photo

“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

Richard Francis Burton photo

“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)

“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

Jack Kerouac photo
Robert Spencer photo
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle photo

“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)

Douglas Hofstadter photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“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

Brigham Young photo
David Brewster photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Gwendolyn Brooks photo

“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)

Albert Finney photo

“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).

Adam Roberts photo

“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

Chris Cornell photo

“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

Swami Vivekananda photo
George Crabbe photo

“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.

Otto Weininger photo

“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.”

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.

John Gray photo
Alan Keyes photo
Phaedrus photo
Pythagoras photo

“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

Jeff VanderMeer photo
Zoroaster photo

“Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.”

Zoroaster Persian prophet and founder of Zoroastrianism

Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 27, 14.
The Gathas

Juliana Hatfield photo

“Okay I gotta go
Maybe I don't want to know
There's too much truth in this room.”

Juliana Hatfield (1967) American guitarist/singer-songwriter and author

"Total System Failure"
Juliana's Pony: Total System Failure (2000)

Horace Greeley photo

“III. We think you are unduly influenced by the counsels, the representations, the menaces, of certain fossil politicians hailing from the Border Slave States. Knowing well that the heartily, unconditionally loyal portion of the White citizens of those States do not expect nor desire chat Slavery shall be upheld to the prejudice of the Union--(for the truth of which we appeal not only to every Republican residing in those States, but to such eminent loyalists as H. Winter Davis, Parson Brownlow, the Union Central Committee of Baltimore, and to The Nashville Union)--we ask you to consider that Slavery is everywhere the inciting cause and sustaining base of treason: the most slaveholding sections of Maryland and Delaware being this day, though under the Union flag, in full sympathy with the Rebellion, while the Free-Labor portions of Tennessee and of Texas, though writhing under the bloody heel of Treason, are unconquerably loyal to the Union. So emphatically is this the case, that a most intelligent Union banker of Baltimore recently avowed his confident belief that a majority of the present Legislature of Maryland, though elected as and still professing to be Unionists, are at heart desirous of the triumph of the Jeff. Davis conspiracy; and when asked how they could be won back to loyalty, replied "only by the complete Abolition of Slavery." It seems to us the most obvious truth, that whatever strengthens or fortifies Slavery in the Border States strengthens also Treason, and drives home the wedge intended to divide the Union. Had you from the first refused to recognize in those States, as here, any other than unconditional loyalty--that which stands for the Union, whatever may become of Slavery, those States would have been, and would be, far more helpful and less troublesome to the defenders of the Union than they have been, or now are.”

Horace Greeley (1811–1872) American politician and publisher

1860s, The Prayer of the Twenty Millions (1862)

Frida Kahlo photo
Glen Cook photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

Generally attributed to Kant on social media, this is actually from a quotation by Ayn Rand paraphrasing Kant. Cited in Judgment Day: My Years with Ayn Rand http://books.google.com/books?id=d0tbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22If+the+truth+shall+kill+them,+let+them+die.%22&dq=%22If+the+truth+shall+kill+them,+let+them+die.%22&hl=de&sa=X&ei=6ax9VI6BE4SgyAPw_IKABg&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAQ (1989) by Nathaniel Brandon.
Misattributed

Guy Gavriel Kay photo

“It was true, it was all true. But none of it was the truth.”

Part 5, “The Memory of a Flame”, Chapter 17 (p. 541)
Tigana (1990)