Quotes about the truth
page 49

“Now, of course, one of the difficulties in speaking out today grows the fact that there are those who are seeking to equate dissent with disloyalty. It's a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced. The truth must be told, and I say that those who are seeking to make it appear that anyone who opposes the war in Vietnam is a fool or a traitor or an enemy of our soldiers is a person that has taken a stand against the best in our tradition.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

War, People, Fools, Silence

“I would say that my aims of writing this book are less concerned with the facts of history than with the truth of art.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Argument of Kings, 1987

Books, Art, History

“…the Indian tradition of non-violence and purity of motive and means, the tradition of ethical and religious approach to all political questions and noted that these had found a perfect embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi…One could draw up a whole declaration of human rights in terms of ahimsa. If individuals and nations are animated by such a belief in a beneficent Supreme Power; in truth and in human brotherhood, we can look forward to a future free from anxiety and fear and full of hope and promise of happiness.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In another of his speeches on Indian tradition quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

Fear, Hope, Motivation, Question

“Can loveliness lose its power? Ah, yes! when love can lose its truth. Weak and impetuous, yielding to temptation, but trembling to enjoy the reward of the committed crime; such is the man of whom my heart made its divinity, — for whose sake I would have toiled as a slave; ay, and do; but with far other aim now. Let us but once meet again, Jehanghire, and thou art mine! but I — I can never be thine again. Life, throne, fortunes, we will yet share together; but my heart, never, never more!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Other Gift Books

Love, Life, Art, Heart

“Cultivate truth, good faith, experience, cleverness, sociability, and industry.”

Pittacus of Mytilene Greek sage

As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, i. 78.

Faith

“Truth means the fulfilment of our self; and moral law means following the law of our being. Truth is the beginning and end (the substance) of material existence. Without truth there is no material existence. It is for this reason that the moral man values truth.
Truth is not only the fulfilment of our own being; it is that by which things outside of us have an existence. The fulfilment of our being is moral sense. The fulfilment of the nature of things outside of us is intellect. These, moral sense and intellect, are the powers or faculties of our being. They combine the inner or subjective and outer or objective use of the power of the mind. Therefore, with truth, everything done is right.”

Zisi (-481–-402 BC) Chinese philosopher

Source: The Doctrine of the Mean, p. 124

Law, Nature, Sense

“It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a great mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and resolutely. They believe in the power of the spirit, in the goodness which is at the heart of things, in the triumph which is in store for the great moral ideals of the race. But this faith only too often leads to an optimism which is sadly and fatally at variance with actual results. It is the realist and not the idealist who is generally justified by events. We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle…. Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed, so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts in a letter dated 8 January 1921, published in the New York Evening Post, 2 March 1921

People, World, Faith, Optimism

“We must be something in order to do something, but we must also do something in order to be something. The best rule, I think, is this: If we find it hard to do good, then let us try to be good. If, on the other hand, we find it hard to be good, then let us try to do good. Being leads to doing, doing leads to being. Yet below both as their common root is faith, — faith in God, in man, in ourselves, in the eternal superiority of right over wrong, truth over error, good over evil, love over all selfishness and all sin.”

James Freeman Clarke (1810–1888) American theologian and writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 121.

Love, God, Faith, Error

“Congress should reject that cynicism in defense of historical truth.”

Bruce Fein (1947) American lawyer

Armenian crime amnesia? (2007)

“Friends should always tell you the truth. But please don’t.”

Louis C.K. (1967) American comedian and actor

http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2013/01/louis-ck-proust-questionnaire

“The more truth you can get into any business, the better. Let the other side know the defects of yours, let them know how you are to be satisfied, let there be as little to be found as possible (I should say nothing), and if your business be an honest one, it will be best tended in this way.”

Arthur Helps (1813–1875) British writer

‘Truth’, Chapter I.
Friends in Council (First Series), (1847),

Way, Business

“The principle of collective leadership is elementary for a proletarian party and for a party of the Lenin type. Nevertheless, we must emphasize this old truth, because for about 20 years we have had practically no collective leadership; there flourished the cult of the individual which was condemned first by Marx and then by Lenin. And this, of course, could not but reflect negatively on the position of the party and its work.”

Anastas Mikoyan (1895–1978) Russian revolutionary and Soviet statesman

As quoted in "The World Almanac and Book of Facts" (1969), p. 159

“What, then, is the Constitution? I will tell you. It is not even like the British Constitution, which is made up of enactments of Parliament, decisions of Courts, and the established usages of the Government. The American Constitution is a written instrument full and complete in itself. No Court in America, no Congress, no President, can add a single word thereto, or take a single word threreto. It is a great national enactment done by the people, and can only be altered, amended, or added to by the people. I am careful to make this statement here; in America it would not be necessary. It would not be necessary here if my assailant had shown the same desire to be set before you the simple truth, which he manifested to make out a good case for himself and friends.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, The Constitution of the United States: Is It Pro-Slavery or Anti-Slavery? (1860)

People, Decision

“I believe my doctrines to be in the main true; I believe all truth to be valuable, and its dissemination a blessing.”

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation

Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 388

“Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx — my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me — we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!).”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Life

“You may set it down as a truth which admits of few exceptions, that those who ask your opinion really want your praise, and will be contented with nothing less.”

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

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

“Turning to God, Truth, Reality, simply means to let go, even fearfully at first, of our self-centered ideas.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

1500 Ways to Escape the Human Jungle

God, Idea, Reality

“Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.”

Stanisław Lem book His Master's Voice

Preface
His Master's Voice (1968)

God, Lie, Angels, Fashion

“I have followed after the truth, across this windy planet upon which every person is nourished by one or another lie.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

Coth, in Book Four : Coth at Porutsa, Ch. XXVI : The Realist in Defeat
The Silver Stallion (1926)

Lie, Personality

“Its literary merits must be left to the judgment of its readers; as to its truth, I should not hesitate to make the confident assertion that from the first word to the last I have aimed at nothing else.”

Flavius Josephus (37–100) first-century Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer

Closing words, trans. G. A. Williamson
The Jewish War (c. 75 CE)

Confidence

“What matter that the man stands for much I cannot love—the moment he touches the realms of truth he enters my world and is my friend.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), p. 89

Love, World

“What is the explanation of this evil reputation which attaches not to politicians of one party, but to the whole race? Primarily, I suppose, it is due to the fact that ever since States began to be they have been in peril and have trusted to force for their safety. War has been their normal history…With war and the preparation for war go the stratagems of diplomacy, the dropping of the ordinary code of morals, a holiday for truth, and an aftermath of cynicism…In the arena of international rivalry and conflict men have placed patriotism above truthfulness as the indispensable virtue of statesmen.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech at his inauguration as Lord Rector of The University of Edinburgh (6 November 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 85-86.
1925

Men, War, History, Evil

“It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

Future

“You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong. The modern method is to assume without discussion that he is wrong and then distract his attention from this (the only real issue) by busily explaining how he became so silly. In the course of the last fifteen years I have found this vice so common that I have had to invent a name for it. I call it “Bulverism”. Some day I am going to write the biography of its imaginary inventor, Ezekiel Bulver, whose destiny was determined at the age of five when he heard his mother say to his father—who had been maintaining that two sides of a triangle were together greater than a third—”Oh you say that because you are a man.” “At that moment”, E. Bulver assures us, “there flashed across my opening mind the great truth that refutation is no necessary part of argument. Assume that your opponent is wrong, and the world will be at your feet. Attempt to prove that he is wrong or (worse still) try to find out whether he is wrong or right, and the national dynamism of our age will thrust you to the wall.””

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

That is how Bulver became one of the makers of the Twentieth Century.
"Bulverism" (1941)

Age, World, Parting

“Do they lie? Fervently. Do they steal? Only silver and gold. Do they remember? I am in constant touch. Hardly a day passes. The children. Some can’t spell, still. Took a walk in the light-manufacturing district, where everything’s been converted. Lots of little shops, wine bars. Saw some strange things. Saw a group of square steel plates arranged on a floor. Very interesting. Saw a Man Mountain Dean dressed in heavenly blue. Wild, chewing children. They were small. Petite. Out of scale. They came and went. Doors banging. They were of different sexes but wore similar clothes. Wandered away, then they wandered back. They’re vague, you know, they tell you things in a vague way. Asked me to leave, said they’d had enough. Enough what? I asked. Enough of my lip, they said. Although the truth was that I had visited upon them only the palest of apothegms—the one about the salt losing its savor, the one about the fowls of the air.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

Children, Lie, Sex, Way

“I have already indicated to you the meaning of the word religion, as applied to Islam. The truth is that Islam is not a Church. It is a State conceived as a contractual organism long before Rousseau ever thought of such a thing, and animated by an ethical ideal which regards man not as an earth-rooted creature, defined by this or that portion of the earth, but as a spiritual being understood in terms of a social mechanism, and possessing rights and duties as a living factor in that mechanism.”

Muhammad Iqbál (1877–1938) Urdu poet and leader of the Pakistan Movement

Sir Muhammad Iqbal’s 1930 Presidential Address to the 25th Session of the All-India Muslim League, Allahabad, 29 December 1930 (from University of Columbia website http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00islamlinks/txt_iqbal_1930.html)

Religion, Animals

“The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically intercommunicated wisdom--the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals--qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers--in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity, and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Critical Path (1981)

Love, Wisdom, God, Faith

“I have very little regard for consensus if it blinds you to the truth.”

Harry Belafonte (1927) American singer

Interview in The Guardian (2007)

“The best mind-altering drug is truth.”

Jane Wagner (1935) Playwright, actress

Other material for Lily Tomlin

“Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back. This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Michael Powell, "In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New Ground; Museum Dedicated to Biblical Interpretation Of the World Is Being Built Near Cincinnati", The Washington Post (September 25, 2005), p. A.03

God, Understanding, Science, Cry

“Numerous are the academic chairs, but rare are wise and noble teachers. Numerous and large are the lecture halls, but far from numerous the young men who genuinely thirst for truth and justice. Numerous are the wares that nature produces by the dozen, but her choice products are few.”

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

Zahlreich sind die Lehrkanzeln, aber selten die weisen und edlen Lehrer. Zahlreich und groß sind die Hörsäle, doch wenig zahlreich die jungen Menschen, die ehrlich nach Wahrheit und Gerechtigkeit dürsten. Zahlreich spendet die Natur ihre Dutzendware, aber das Feinere erzeugt sie selten.
1930s, Mein Weltbild (My World-view) (1931)

Men, Justice, Nature, Teachers

“A person who does not have stability of mind is an unstable dinghy. In this struggle of life, I will confront all the challenges with truth and strength, and will never waver. Cowardliness is an eveil which I should banish from my life.”

Totaram Sanadhya (1876–1947) Fijian writer

My Twenty-One Years in the Fiji Islands (English translation by J.D. Kelly & U.K. Singh, Fiji Museum, 1991).

Life, Personality

“In its resistance to the great attack on traditional dogma launched by the Enlightenment, the Protestant theology of the 19th century … had very largely agreed in taking up a defensive position in which the truth of Christian faith was to be proved by demonstrating the indispensability of religious feeling to all higher humanity. … Yet on this basis it was not possible to refute the contention of Ludwig Feuerbach that the secret of theology is anthropology. … The secret of God was in truth that of self-glorifying man speaking of God and extolling his own divinity.”

Helmut Gollwitzer (1908–1993) German theologian and author

Source: Introduction to Church Dogmatics (1957), pp. 12-13

God, Secret, Faith, Feeling

“Truth never yet fell dead in the streets; it has such affinity with the soul of man, the seed however broadcast will catch somewhere and produce its hundredfold.”

Theodore Parker (1810–1860) abolitionist

A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (1842).

Soul, Dead

“The inhabitants of this land are religious, affectionate, hospitable, genial and frank. They are fond of scientific pursuits, inclined to austerity of life, seekers after justice, contented, industrious, capable in affairs, loyal, truthful and constant… They one and all believe in the unity of God, and as to the reverence they pay to the images of stone and wood and the like, which simpletons regard as idolatry, it is not so.”

Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak (1551–1602) vizier

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Life, God, Justice

“What Jesus spoke was Truth; the way He spoke was gracious. He spoke the truth in love. God is love, and the Son of God spoke lovingly.”

James Hamilton (1814–1867) Scottish minister and a prolific author of religious tracts

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 64.

Love, God, Way

“The truth of the matter is that, even under individualism, only a small fraction of the population is impelled chiefly by the profit motive, and that vast multitudes of men and women are motivated by other incentives than by the desire for profit. …nevertheless, they are strategic individuals whose activities are essential to efficiency in industry.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Women, Men, Motivation

“If any of you ever go into the pulpit "simply upon the cold legs of custom," be very careful to take a manuscript with you. But if you go to speak to the assembly because your mind is full of the truth, and you long to impart that truth to them, for their sake and for God's sake, — then charge your mind with it, and speak with all the force you can give it, without any notes.”

Richard Salter Storrs (1821–1900) American Congregational clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 483.

God

“Nor, in truth, is it of little importance to prevent the suspicion of any difference having arisen between us from being handed down in any way to our posterity; for it is worse than absurd that parties should be found disagreeing on the very principles, after we have been compelled to make our departure from the world.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

Letter to Philip Melanchthon, November 28, 1552.

World, Way, Departure

“Current Catholic worship often ignores the essential connection between truth and beauty, body and soul, at the center of the Catholic worldview. The Church requires that we be faithful, but must we also be deaf, dumb, and blind? I deserve to suffer for my sins, but must so much of that punishment take place in church?”

Dana Gioia (1950) American writer

30
Essays, Can Poetry Matter? (1991), The Catholic Writer Today (2013)

Faith, Beauty, Soul, Suffering

“I wish I was still an atheist. Believing I was born into a harsh, uncaring cosmos – in which my existence was a random roll of the dice and I was destined to die and rot and then be gone forever – was infinitely more comforting than the truth. Because the truth is that my God is coming back. When he arrives I’ll be waiting for him with a shotgun. And I’m keeping the last shell for myself.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

The Fuller Memorandum (2010)
The Laundry Files

God, Waiting

“Adieu, the city's ceaseless hum,
The haunts of sensual life, adieu!
Green fields, and silent glens we come,
To spend this bright spring-day with you.Whether the hills and vales shall gleam
With beauty, is for us to choose;
For leaf and blossom, rock and stream,
Are coloured with the spirit's hues.Here, to the seeking soul, is brought
A nobler view of human fate,
And higher feeling, higher thought,
And glimpses of a higher state.Through change of time, on sea and shore,
Serenely nature smiles away;
Yon infinite blue sky bends o'er
Our world, as at the primal day.The self-renewing earth is moved
With youthful life each circling year;
And flowers that Ceres' daughter loved
At Enna, now are blooming here.Glad nature will this truth reveal,
That God is ours and we are His.
O friends, my friends! what joy to feel
That He our loving Father is!”

James Aldrich (1810–1856) American editor and minor poet

A Spring-Day Walk.

Love, Life, God, Fate

“Anyone who cares about truth should avoid not politics, but Olympic lies.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Happiness Can’t Be Faked, 2008

“When I first heard about meditation, I had zero interest in it. I wasn't even curious. It sounded like a waste of time.
What got me interested, though, was the phrase "true happiness lies within." At first I thought it sounded kind of mean, because it doesn't tell you where the "within" is, or how to get there. But still it had a ring of truth. And I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.”

David Lynch book Catching the Big Fish

The First Dive, p. 3
Catching the Big Fish (2006)

Way, Thinking, Time, Happiness

“The one irreducible truth about humanity is diversity.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The One Irreducible Truth about Humanity" (2005)

“I do not tolerate the so-called "cultic" (or ego-made, and ego-reinforcing) approach to Me. I do not tolerate the seeking ego's "cult" of the "man in the middle". I am not a self-deluded ego-man—making much of himself, and looking to include everyone-and-everything around himself for the sake of social and political power. To be the "man in the middle" is to be in a Man-made trap, an absurd mummery of "cultic" devices that enshrines and perpetuates the ego-"I" in one and all. Therefore, I do not make or tolerate the religion-making "cult" of ego-Man. I do not tolerate the inevitable abuses of religion, of Spirituality, of Truth Itself, and of My own Person (even in bodily human Form) that are made (in endless blows and mockeries) by ego-based mankind when the Great Esoteric Truth of devotion to the Adept-Realizer is not rightly understood and rightly practiced.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

http://www.adidam.org/teaching/first_word/complete_text.html

Religion, Personality

“I started out like most people just finding my local martial arts gym … and it's quite easy to start thinking that whatever you're in is the best thing that you can do, so … I assumed that Taekwondo is the best. … I started thinking, “Well, maybe there's something else that the other arts have offer,” so I started cross-training. Anyway, that got me into competing in mixed martial arts. So, I thought my diet was pretty good … and it was until I got injured … that I actually had some time to sit back and really analyze what I was eating, and I realized I hadn't applied the same scrutiny to my diet as I had to the martial arts training. So I saw a parallel there, that in martial arts there's a lot of nonsense out there, people teaching stuff that really doesn't work, and I'd realized that and started finding the truth in martial arts, and basically I realized I hadn't found the truth in nutrition, so last year I spent over 1,000 hours looking at peer reviewed medical science and realized that a plant-based diet is superior and optimal for health and athletic performance.”

James Wilks (1978) English martial artist

Speech at the Healthy Lifestyle Expo, in Woodland Hills, California (October 12-15, 2012). Video in “MMA Ultimate Fighter - James "Lighting" Wilks - Is Vegan”, in VegSource.com http://www.vegsource.com/news/2012/12/mma-ultimate-fighter---james-lighting-wilks---is-vegan-video.html.

People, Health, Art, Optimism

“In dealing with its subject, [this book] exercises complete fidelity to truth; unlike secularist and Marxist writers, it does not believe in re-writing and fabricating history. Its aim is to raise the informational level of our people and to make them better aware of the more persistent ideological forces at work.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

People, Books, Exercises, History

“Augustine, the father of theologians, was walking on the ocean shore and pondering over the truth, "three distinct persons, not separate, but distinct; and yet but one God;" and he came upon a little boy that was playing with a colored sea- shell, scooping a hole in the sand, and then going down to the waves and getting his shell full of water and putting it into the hole. Augustine said, "What are you doing, my little fellow? " The boy replied, "I am going to pour the sea into that hole." "Ah," said Augustine, "that is what I have been attempting. Standing at the ocean of infinity, I have attempted to grasp it with my finite mind."”

Joseph Dare (reverend) (1831–1880) Australian clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 421.

God, Color, Boy, Water

“Cultural theory as we have it promises to grapple with some fundamental problems, but on the whole fails to deliver. It has been shamefaced about morality and metaphysics, embarrassed about love, biology, religion and revolution, largely silent about evil, reticent about death and suffering, dogmatic about essences, universals and foundations, and superficial about truth, objectivity and disinterestedness. This, on any estimate, is rather a large slice of human existence to fall down on. It is also, as we have suggested before, rather an awkward moment in history to find oneself with little or nothing to say about such fundamental questions.”

Terry Eagleton (1943) British writer, academic and educator

2000s, After Theory (2003)

Love, Death, Religion, History

“Some of you may doubt the truth of what I now say, and argue that the Lord could teach him. This is a mistake. The Lord could not have taught him in any other way than in the way in which He did teach him. You believe Adam was made of the dust of this earth. This I do not believe, though it is supposed that it is so written in the Bible; but it is not, to my understanding. You can write that information to the States, if you please-that I have publicly declared that I do not believe that portion of the Bible as the Christian world do. I never did, and I never want to. What is the reason I do not? Because I have come to understanding, and banished from my mind all the baby stories my mother taught me when I was a child. But suppose Adam was made and fashioned the same as we make adobies; if he had never drunk of the bitter cup; the Lord might have talked to him to this day, and he would have continued as he was to all eternity, never advancing one particle in the school of intelligence. This idea opens up a field of light to the intelligent mind. How can you know truth but by its opposite, or light but by its opposite? The absence of light is darkness. How can sweetness be known but by its opposite, bitter? It is by this means that we obtain all intelligence.”

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

Journal of Discourse 2:6-7 (October 23, 1853)
1850s

World, School, Way, Intelligence

“In his attempt to unite the Good and the True by making the Good the highest Idea of all, Plato is nevertheless usurping aretês place with dialectically determined truth. Once the Good has been contained as a dialectical idea it is no trouble for another philosopher to come along and show by dialectical methods that aretê, the Good, can be more advantageously demoted to a lower position within a "true" order of things, more compatible with the inner workings of dialectic. Such a philosopher was not long in coming. His name was Aristotle.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 29

Idea

“The life of the Christian is not all smooth. He has stern conflicts to meet. Severe temptations assail him. ‘The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.’ The nearer we come to the close of this earth’s history, the more delusive and ensnaring will be the attacks of the enemy. His attacks will grow fiercer and more frequent. Those who resist light and truth will become more hardened and unimpressible, and more bitter against those who love God and keep His commandments (MS 33, 1911).”

Ellen G. White (1827–1915) American author and founder/leader of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church

The SDA Bible Commentary, vol. 6, p. 1111.

Love, Life, God, History

“I lived the war in Iraq, and today I still have family and friends fighting in Iraq. My support for our troops is unwavering. I believe this is not a time for finger-pointing, it is a time for truth — the whole truth— vs. hype, and misinformation.”

Jessica Lynch (1983) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Congressional testimony (2007)

War, Family, Support, Time

“As we thrash on to a finish through the current thicket of flags and banners, we realize it is no finish at all, but a new inning. Secure in the rules, we know that, given three strikes, the truth will out.”

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) American cartoonist

Equal Time for Pogo (1968)

“We are reluctant to admit that essentially war is the business of killing, though that is the simplest truth in the book.”

S.L.A. Marshall (1900–1977) United States Army general and Military historian

Fire as the Cure. p. 67.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)

War, Books, Business

“You get your mucky fingers burnt / You get your truth from the lies that you've learnt
Fed up with life in the city / 'Cos all the phonies have blown my mind
It's all mine!”

Noel Gallagher (1967) British musician

Mucky Fingers
Don't Believe the Truth (2005)

Life

“I should be inexcusable, considering the share I have formerly had in that unhappy business, if, upon this occasion, I should omit to mention the African slave-trade. I do not rank this amongst our national sins, because I hope, and believe, a very great majority of the nation earnestly long for its suppression. But, hitherto, petty and partial interest prevail against the voice of justice, humanity and truth. This enormity, however, is not sufficiently laid to heart. If you are justly shocked by what you hear of the cruelties practised in France, you would, perhaps, be shocked much more, if you could fully conceive of the evils and miseries inseparable from this traffic, which I apprehend, not from hearsay, but from my own observation, are equal in atrocity, and, perhaps superior in number, in the course of a single year, to any or all the worst actions which have been known in France since the commencement of their revolution. There is a cry of blood against us; a cry accumulated by the accession of fresh victims, of thousands, of scores of thousands, I had almost said of hundreds of thousands, from year to year.”

John Newton (1725–1807) Anglican clergyman and hymn-writer

As quoted in The Works of the Rev. John Newton... to which are Prefixed Memoirs of His Life (1839), Vol. 2, U. Hunt, pages 429-230.

Justice, Hope, Business, Evil

“Without the aid of these, then, it is not possible to deal accurately with the forms of being nor to discover the truth in things, knowledge of which is wisdom, and evidently not even to philosophize properly, for "just as painting contributes to the menial arts toward correctness of theory, so in truth lines, numbers, harmonic intervals, and the revolutions of circles bear aid to the learning of the doctrines of wisdom," says the Pythagorean Androcydes. Likewise Archytas of Tarentum, at the beginning of… On Harmony, says… in about these words: "It seems to me that they do well to study mathematics, and it is not at all strange that they have correct knowledge about each thing, what it is. For if they knew rightly the nature of the whole, they were also likely to see well what is the nature of the parts. About geometry, indeed, and arithmetic and astronomy, they have handed down to us a clear understanding, and not least also about music. For these seem to be sister sciences; for they deal with sister subjects, the first two forms of being."”

Nicomachus (60–120) Ancient Greek mathematician

Nicomachus of Gerasa: Introduction to Arithmetic (1926)

Wisdom, Art, Music, Mathematics

“The truth is that economic competition is the very opposite of competition in the animal kingdom. It is not a competition in the grabbing off of scarce nature-given supplies, as it is in the animal kingdom. Rather, it is a competition in the positive creation of new and additional wealth.”

George Reisman (1937) American economist

Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (1996)

Nature, Animals, Wealth

“For truth is precious and divine,—
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto II, line 257
Source: Hudibras, Part II (1664)

Swine

“As Simone Weil— perhaps the strangest and most unlikely Thoreauvian solitary, outcast, and transcendentalist of all— wrote, echoing Thoreau's sense of awareness: "The authentic and pure values— truth, beauty, and goodness— in the activity of a human being are the result of one and the same act, a certain application of the full attention to the object." Or, more tersely yet: "Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer."
It is perhaps the saddest, most hopeless thing we can say about our culture that it is a culture of distraction. "Attention deficit" is a cultural disorder, a debasement of spirit, before it is an ailment in our children to be treated with Ritalin.”

Curtis White (1951) American academic

"The spirit of disobedience: an invitation to resistance"

Children, Beauty, Sense

“In discussing all these aggressive and submissive behaviour patterns, it has been assumed that the individuals concerned have been 'telling the truth' and have not been consciously and deliberately modifying their actions to achieve special ends. We 'lie' more with our words than our other communicative signals, but even so the pheneomenon cannot be overlooked entirely. It is extremely difficult to 'utter' untruths with the kind of behaviour patterns we have been discussing, but not impossible. As I have already mentioned, when parents adopt this procedure towards their young children, it usually fails much more drastically than they realize. Between adults, however, who are much preoccupied with the verbalized information content of the social interactions, it can be more successful. Unfortunately for the behaviour-liar, he typically lies only with certain selected elements of his total signalling system. Others, which he is not aware of, give the game away.”

Desmond Morris book The Naked Ape

(2010), p. 115-116
The Naked Ape (1967)

Children, Lie, Game, Communication

“If the passion for truthfulness is merely controlled and stilled without being satisfied, it will kill the activities it is supposed to support. This may be one of the reasons why, at the present time, the study of the humanities runs a risk of sliding from professional seriousness, through professionalization, to a finally disenchanted careerism.”

Bernard Williams (1929–2003) English moral philosopher

Source: Truth and Truthfulness (2002), p. 3

Support, Study, Passion, Time

“The life-boat may have a tasteful bend and beautiful decoration, but these are not the qualities for which I prize it; it was my salvation from the howling sea! So the interest which a regenerate soul takes in the Bible, is founded on a personal application to the heart of the saving truth which it contains.”

James Waddel Alexander (1804–1859) American Presbyterian minister and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 30.

Life, Beauty, Soul, Heart

“Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction … for fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.”

G. K. Chesterton book The Club of Queer Trades

The Club of Queer Trades (1905) Ch. 4 "Speculation of the House Agent"

“There is wisdom in madness and strong probability of truth in all accusations, for people are complete and everybody is capable of everything”

Joseph Heller book God Knows

God Knows (1984)

Wisdom, People, Strong, Madness

“The fact is those root-truths on which the foundations of our being rest, are apprehended not logically at all, but mystically. This faculty of spiritual apprehension, which is a very different one from those which are trained in schools and colleges, must be educated and fed, not less, but more carefully than our lower faculties, else it will be starved and die, however learned and able in other respects we may become.”

John Campbell Shairp (1819–1885) British writer

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 563.

Education, School, Learning, Training

“The Bible has been interpreted to justify such evil practices as, for example, slavery, the slaughter of prisoners of war, the sadistic murders of women believed to be witches, capital punishment for hundreds of offenses, polygamy, and cruelty to animals. It has been used to encourage belief in the grossest superstition and to discourage the free teaching of scientific truths. We must never forget that both good and evil flow from the Bible. It is therefore not above criticism.”

Steve Allen (1921–2000) American comedian, actor, musician and writer

Steve Allen on the Bible, Religion, and Morality (1990)

Women, War, Evil, Animals

“We are living a moment of truth in Iraq, a moment in which we have to look fair and square at disagreeable realities, in which we have to look at ourselves. The pictures from Abu Ghraib prison are a kind of mirror in which we have to look at ourselves and ask: what kind of people did this? How did this become possible? Could I have done a thing like this to those people?”

Michael Ignatieff (1947) professor at Harvard Kennedy School and former Canadian politician

From "Living Fearlessly in a Fearless World" Ignatieff Commencement Address to Whitman College (USA), 2004

People, Reality

“Either something is authentic or it is unauthentic, it is either false or true, make-believe or spontaneous life; yet here we are faced with a prevaricated truth and an authentic fake, hence a thing that is at once the truth and a lie.”

Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author

"Gruppenführer Louis XVI", in A Perfect Vacuum (1971), tr. Michael Kandel (1978)

Life, Lie, Falseness

“In the human figure as it approaches perfection… is contained the sure guide for the determination of all true principles of design. …it was because the ancient Greeks… realized this truth that they excelled all others in art.”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)

Art, Perfection

“And now that I have allowed myself the jest to which in this two-sided life hardly any page can be too serious to grant a place, I part with the book with deep seriousness, in the sure hope that sooner or later it will reach those to whom alone it can be addressed; and for the rest, patiently resigned that the same fate should, in full measure, befall it, that in all ages has, to some extent, befallen all knowledge, and especially the weightiest knowledge of the truth, to which only a brief triumph is allotted between the two long periods in which it is condemned as paradoxical or disparaged as trivial. The former fate is also wont to befall its author. But life is short, and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

:s:The World as Will and Representation/Preface to the First Edition, last paragraph. Mostly quoted rather incorrectly as: All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. Und so, nachdem ich mir den Scherz erlaubt, dem eine Stelle zu gönnen, in diesem durchweg zweideutigen Leben kaum irgend ein Blatt zu ernsthaft seyn kann, gebe ich mit innigem Ernst das Buch hin, in der Zuversicht, daß es früh oder spät diejenigen erreichen wird, an welche es allein gerichtet seyn kann, und übrigens gelassen darin ergeben, daß auch ihm in vollem Maaße das Schicksal werde, welches in jeder Erkenntniß, also um so mehr in der wichtigsten, allezeit der Wahrheit zu Theil ward, der nur ein kurzes Siegesfest beschieden ist, zwischen den beiden langen Zeiträumen, wo sie als paradox verdammt und als trivial geringgeschätzt wird. Auch pflegt das erstere Schicksal ihren Urheber mitzutreffen.— Aber das Leben ist kurz und die Wahrheit wirkt ferne und lebt lange: sagen wir die Wahrheit. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. Leipzig 1819. Vorrede. p.XVI books.google https://books.google.de/books?id=0HsPAAAAQAAJ&pg=PR16 The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)

Life, Fate, Books, Age

“Th. Jefferson returns his thanks to Dr. De La Motta for the eloquent discourse on the Consecration of the Synagogue of Savannah, which he has been so kind as to send him. It excites in him the gratifying reflection that his country has been the first to prove to the world two truths, the most salutary to human society, that man can govern himself, and that religious freedom is the most effectual anodyne against religious dissension: the maxim of civil government being reversed in that of religion, where its true form is "divided we stand, united, we fall."”

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

Thomas Jefferson to Jacob De La Motta, September 1, 1820. Manuscript Division, Papers of Thomas Jefferson. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/madison.html For the background of the letter see "Thomas Jefferson's Letter on Religious Freedom" Dr. Kenneth Libo Ph.D and Michael Skakun from the Center for Jewish History, New York City, New York. http://sephardicoralhistory.org/education/essays.php?action=show&id=19 1820s

World, Religion, Freedom, Country

“SPAN ID=What_we_should_do> What we should do, I suggest, is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach. We may admit that our groping is often inspired, but we must be on our guard against the belief, however deeply felt, that our inspiration carries any authority, divine or otherwise. If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far it may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without danger, the idea that truth is beyond human authority. And we must retain it. For without this idea there can be no objective standards of inquiry; no criticism of our conjectures; no groping for the unknown; no quest for knowledge.

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Introduction "On The Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance" Section XVII, p. 30 Variant translation: I believe it is worthwhile trying to discover more about the world, even if this only teaches us how little we know. It might do us good to remember from time to time that, while differing widely in the various little bits we know, in our infinite ignorance we are all equal.
If we thus admit that there is no authority beyond the reach of criticism to be found within the whole province of our knowledge, however far we may have penetrated into the unknown, then we can retain, without risk of dogmatism, the idea that truth itself is beyond all human authority. Indeed, we are not only able to retain this idea, we must retain it. For without it there can be no objective standards of scientific inquiry, no criticism of our conjectured solutions, no groping for the unknown, and no quest for knowledge.
Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge (1963)

Dreams, Hope, Error, Idea

“One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.”

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

Pearls of Wisdom

God

“Do I, who've read Freud, know what the Future of an Illusion really is and know that religious belief is ineradicable as long as we remain a stupid, poorly-evolved mammalian species, think that some Canadian law is gonna solve this problem? Please. No, our problem is this: our pre-frontal lobes are too small, and our adrenalin glands are too big, and our thumb-finger opposition isn't all that it might be, and we're afraid of the dark, and we're afraid to die, and we believe in the truths of holy books that are so stupid and so fabricated that a child can - and all children do, as you can tell by their questions - actually see through them. And I think it should be (religion) treated with ridicule and hatred and contempt. And I claim that right.”

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyoOfRog1EM&t=15m49s
"Be It Resolved: Freedom of Speech Includes the Freedom to Hate", 15/11/2006.
2000s, 2006

Children, Books, Stupidity, Religion

“The origins of secularism in the west may be found in two circumstances—in early Christian teachings and, still more, experience, which created two institutions, Church and State; and in later Christian conflicts, which drove the two apart. Muslims, too, had their religious disagreements, but there was nothing remotely approaching the ferocity of the Christian struggles between Protestants and Catholics, which devastated Christian Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and finally drove Christians in desperation to evolve a doctrine of the separation of religion from the state. Only by depriving religious institutions of coercive power, it seemed, could Christendom restrain the murderous intolerance and persecution that Christians had visited on followers of other religions and, most of all, on those who professed other forms of their own.Muslims experienced no such need and evolved no such doctrine. There was no need for secularism in Islam, and even its pluralism was very different from that of the pagan Roman Empire, so vividly described by Edward Gibbon when he remarked that "the various modes of worship, which prevailed in the Roman world, were all considered by the people, as equally true; by the philosopher, as equally false; and by the magistrate, as equally useful." Islam was never prepared, either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship. It did, however, accord to the holders of partial truth a degree of practical as well as theoretical tolerance rarely paralleled in the Christian world until the West adopted a measure of secularism in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.”

Bernard Lewis (1916–2018) British-American historian

Books, The Roots of Muslim Rage (1990)

People, World, Religion, Falseness

“BOREDOM with established truths is a great enemy of free men.”

Bernard Crick (1929–2008) British political theorist and democratic socialist

Source: In Defence Of Politics (Second Edition) – 1981, Chapter 1, The Nature Of Political Rule, p. 15.

Men

“Before we try to destroy someone else, we should first pass judgment on ourselves. Before finding fault with others, we must first pass judgment upon ourselves. Before we backbite others, we must first pass judgment upon our selves. Before we lie about others, we must first judge ourselves. Before we hurt the heart of another, we must first pass judgment on ourselves. Like that, we have to pass judgment on our thoughts and on all actions done by our eyes, ears, nose, hands, and mouth. The guilty ones are within our own body and mind. These are our qualities which exist in our actions. All these qualities exist within us, do they not? So we have to pass judgment on them. That is the state of Iman-Islam. That is what is called Islam. To first see the fault in yourself and then to pass judgment and correct yourself is true justice. Those who perform that justice are in the religion of truth. They are the leaders of the religion of truth. They are in the state of Iman-Islam. They are the true believers.”

Bawa Muhaiyaddeen (1900–1986) Sri Lankan Sufi leader

Benefit to All (undated)

Lie, Religion, Justice, Heart

“The plain truth is that labor is the chief representative force that keeps the real special interests from dominating American political life.”

Lane Kirkland (1922–1999) American labor leader

Cited by Arthur B. Shostak, Robust Unionism: Innovations in the Labor Movement (1991), p. 190.

Life

“Christ declared. Sathya means Truth. 'He will wear a robe of red, a blood-red robe.' (Here the baba pointed to the red colored robe he happened to be wearing that day!). He will be short, with a crown (here he points to his hair). The lamb is the sign and symbol of love. Christ did not declare that he will come again, he said, 'He who made me will come again.' That ba ba (bleating of the sheep or lamb) is this Baba, and Sai, the short, curly-hair-crowned red-robed Baba, is come. He is not only this Form, but, he is every one of you, as the Dweller in the Heart.”

Sathya Sai Baba (1926–2011) Indian guru

Sathya Sai Speaks Vol. 11, p. 346

Love, Color, Heart, Christ

“Words were no gift, said Haut. They were tangled nets snaring all who ventured into their midst, until an entire people could hang helpless, choking on their own arguments, even as dissolution closed in on all sides.
The Jaghut had rejected that path. Defying the eternal plea for communication among peoples, in the name of understanding, peace or whatever, they had stopped talking, even with each other. And their city was abandoned, home now to a single soul, the Lord of Hate, the one who had laid bare the brutal truth of the future awaiting them all.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Hate, People, Peace, Home

“don't talk, I will listen
don't talk, you keep your distance
I'd rather hear some truth tonight
than entertain your lies”

Natalie Merchant (1963) American singer-songwriter

Song lyrics, In My Tribe (1987), Don't Talk

“Every morning I speak to my conscience and the dialogue calms me down. I look at the country, read the newspaper, and think: 'All is becoming a reality little by little, piece by piece'. To be truthful, I should have had the copyright to it. Justice, TV, public order. I wrote about this 30 years ago…. Berlusconi is an extraordinary man, a man of action. This is what Italy needs: not a man of words, but a man of action.”

Licio Gelli (1919–2015) Italian financier, liaison with Nazi Germany, P2 grandmaster, involved in many scandals

Justice, Thinking, Reality, Reading

“Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"The Persian Version," lines 1–2, from Poems 1938-1945: Satires and Grotesques (1946).
Poems

Love

“The truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy known but to few on this Earth, and whom only the simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Costaguanaro of the boulevards had died from solitude and want of faith in himself and others.”

Joseph Conrad book Nostromo

Part Third: The Lighthouse, Ch. 10
Nostromo (1904)

Faith, Solitude

“Truth is absolute, truth is supreme, truth is never disposable in national political life.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

ABC Radio "AM" (25 August 1995)

Life

“Such, indeed, is the exuberance and flexibility of this language and its power of compounding words, that when it has been, so to speak, baptised and thoroughly penetrated with the spirit of Christianity, it will probably be found, next to Hebrew and Greek, the most expressive vehicle of Christian truth.”

Monier Monier-Williams (1819–1899) Linguist and dictionary compiler

(Commenting on Sanskrit.) Quoted from Goel, S. R. (2016). History of Hindu-Christian encounters, AD 304 to 1996. Chapter 10. ISBN 9788185990354

“The truth of the matter is no society, not even our severely secularized technocracy, can ever dispense with mystery and magical ritual.”

Theodore Roszak (1933–2011) American social historian, social critic, writer

The Making of the Counter Culture (1969)

“In the first place, I should like to state to the Tribunal that I am fully aware of the serious character of the charges against me. I know the hatred of the world is directed against me; that I particularly since Himmler, Müller, and Pohl are no longer alive, must here, alone, give an account to the world and the Tribunal. I realize that I shall have to tell the truth in this courtroom, in order to enable the Court and the world to fully recognize and understand what has been going on in Germany during this war and to judge it with fairness.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

4/11/46. Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 232 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947

War, World, Understanding

“These two enormous forces — truth and meaning — are at war in today's world. …And something sooner or later has to give.”

Ken Wilber (1949) American writer and public speaker

The Marriage of Sense and Soul (1998)

War, World

“The Christian who will sit with sealed lips when his Master is assailed, when religion is attacked, when wickedness is broached and defended, when truth is denounced, is a denier of his Lord, as guilty as Simon Peter in Pilate's hall.”

Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 189.

Religion

“[I have had many a talk with Cromwell] of god, of nature & of other polytyke & wordly thyngys [from which he has] geddryd more frute of truth then I have downe of any other man lyvyng syth I cam here to my cuntrey.”

Thomas Cromwell, 1st Earl of Essex (1485–1540) English statesman and chief minister to King Henry VIII of England

Thomas Starkey.
About

God, Nature

“Zeal to do all that is in one's power is, in truth, a proof of piety.”

Julian (emperor) (331–363) Roman Emperor, philosopher and writer

As quoted in The Works of the Emperor Julian (1923) by Wilmer Cave France Wright, p. 311; also in The Paganism Reader (2004) edited by Chas S. Clifton, Graham Harvey, p. 26
General sources