Quotes about the truth
page 60

“In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

"The Plutonian Fire"
The Voice of the City (1908)

Art, Nature, Science, Time

“Black Death sits upon an eminence, and numbers the silent peoples for their lord; yet the greater part of the troop remains. The Gortynian judge shakes them in his inexorable urn, demanding the truth with threats, and constrains them to speak out their whole lives' story.”
In speculis Mors atra sedet dominoque silentes adnumerat populos; maior superinminet ordo. arbiter hos dura versat Gortynius urna vera minis poscens adigitque expromere vitas usque retro.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book IV, Line 528 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Death, People, Parting

“In other words, making the most effective use of our female soldiers makes good sense. It enhances our capability. That is a simple truth.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Sense

“As man loses touch with his 'inner being', his instinctive depths, he finds himself trapped in the world of consciousness, that is to say, in the world of other people. Any poet knows this truth; when other people sicken him, he turns to hidden resources of power inside himself, and he knows then that other people don't matter a damn. He knows the 'secret life' inside him is the reality; other people are mere shadows in comparison. but the 'shadows' themselves cling to one another. 'Man is a political animal', said Aristotle, telling one of the greatest lies in human history. Man has more in common with the hills, or with the stars, than with other men.”

Colin Wilson book The Mind Parasites

Source: The Mind Parasites (1967), p. 170

Life, Men, People, Secret

“The next time you ask someone how their day is going, expect, no, DEMAND a response. Don't settle for good. Demand the truth. Make them admit that they're having a shitty day, and then do your best to make it worse.”

Maddox (1978) American internet writer

I Hate Small Talk http://maddox.xmission.com/smalltalk.html <br class="br">The Best Page in the Universe

Time

“Other states in the past sought to conceal this truth from themselves by the exercise of projection - customarily onto a dynasty with supposedly extraordinary powers of healing and unification. This did not save them: indeed historians usually attribute part of the magnitude of the eventual smash to the ingrained, faithful, fatalistic fixation. The supplanting of monarchy, in those circumstances, by new forms of despotism was not the negation of monarchy but the replication of it by societies not yet cured of the addiction.”

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

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

Faith, Exercises, Past, Parting

“The truth is, that most men want knowledge, not for itself, but for the superiority which knowledge confers; and the means they employ to secure this superiority, are as wrong as the ultimate object, for no man can ever end with being superior, who will not begin with being inferior.”

Sydney Smith (1771–1845) English writer and clergyman

Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
Elementary Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1849)

Men, Knowledge

“Believe in no triumph which is won by the deadening of human faculty or the dwarfing of human life. Strive for truth and love, not for victory.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

Source: Aphorisms and Reflections (1901), pp. 234-235

Love, Life, Victory

“Where does that leave me? Trying, as usual, to square general truths with particular circumstances. That’s the difference between pure ethics and political theory; but it isn’t resolved by simply abandoning the tension and sliding to one end of the pole.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

in Tony Judt: the last interview http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/tony-judt-interview by Peter Jukes (2010)

“The spirit of truth says, “Remember.” And you will, if you accept the spirit of truth, allow the spirit of truth to be your expression.”

Martin Cecil, 7th Marquess of Exeter (1909–1988) Marquess of Exeter

Thus It Is, 1989, p. 164
As of a Trumpet, On Eagle's Wings, Thus It Is

““Do you not understand that I want to give this to you—and to Hain and the other worlds—and to the countries of Urras? But to you all! So that one of you cannot use it, as A-Io wants to do, to get power over the others, to get richer or to win more wars. So that you cannot use the truth for your private profit, but only for the common good.”
“In the end, the truth usually insists upon serving only the common good,” Keng said.
“In the end, yes, but I am not willing to wait for the end. I have one lifetime, and I will not spend it for greed and profiteering and lies. I will not serve any master.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, (1974), Chapter 11 (pp. 345-346)

War, World, Understanding, Waiting

“I thought… that the fact that in characterizing truth for a language it is necessary to put words into relations with objects was enough to give some grip for the idea of correspondence; but this now seems to me a mistake. The mistake is in a way only a misnomer, but terminological infelicities have a way of breeding conceptual confusion, and so it is here. Correspondence theories have always been conceived as providing an explanation or analysis of truth, and this, a Tarski-style theory of truth, certainly does not do.”

Donald Davidson (philosopher) (1917–2003) scriitor amator

Donald Davidson (1990, p. 135), as cited in: Simon Evnine (1991) Donald Davidson. p. 137

Way, Idea

“He was not merely the organizer and architect of our freedom, he ennobled our very being. As the apostle not only of truth and ahimsa but also of purity and public conduct he raised us, and indeed the whole of mankind, to a higher level of social and political life.”

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar (1919–1974) Indian writer

In his homage of reverence, love and thankfulness in memory of Mahatma Gandhi, at an Independence Day lecture in 1959 as Governor. Quoted in "Jayachamaraja Wodeyar – A Princely scholar".

Life, Freedom

“Christianity claims that the supernatural is as reasonable as the natural, that man himself is supernatural as truly as he is natural, and that the Bible is so clearly the word of God by proofs that are unanswerable, that it is unreasonable to disbelieve its divine truths.”

Abbott Eliot Kittredge (1834–1912) American minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 35.

God, Nature

“We must stand together to counter Islamization. We must speak the truth and defend our civilization. If we fail to do so, we will end up either enslaved or dead.”

Geert Wilders (1963) Dutch politician

"DECKER: 5 Questions with Geert Wilders", The Washington Times (14 September 2012) http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/sep/14/geert-wilders-5-questions-with-decker/ <br class="br">2010s

Dead

“These pseudo‑events which flood our consciousness must be distinguished from propaganda. The two do have some characteristics in common. But our peculiar problems come from the fact that pseudo‑events are in some respects the opposite of the propaganda which rules totalitarian countries. Propaganda — as prescribed, say, by Hitler in Mein Kampf — is information intentionally biased. Its effect depends primarily on its emotional appeal. While a pseudo‑event is an ambiguous truth, propaganda is an appealing falsehood. Pseudo‑events thrive on our honest desire to be informed, to have “all the facts,” and even to have more facts than there really are.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 34.

Problem, Dependency, Country

“The truths modern science finds—even about human beings—are value-neutral, in no way restraining, and indeed perfectly adapted for, technical application. In short, as Hans Jonas has put it, modern science contains manipulability at its theoretical core—and this remains true even for those great scientists who are themselves motivated by the desire for truth and who have no interest in that mastery over nature to which their discoveries nonetheless contribute and for which science is largely esteemed by the rest of us and mightily supported by the modern state.”

Leon R. Kass (1939) American academic

Source: The Problem of Technology (1993), p. 8

Way, Motivation, Support, Nature

“Openness to the new is the virtue that describes the moral consequence of the doctrine of the relation of spirit to structure. The religion of the future inherits this doctrine from the struggle with the world, and radicalizes it. This virtue acts out the human truth of our relation to the settled contexts of our life and thought. That they are ephemeral and defective, that they cannot accommodate all the experience and insight we have reason to value, that there is always more in us, individually as well as collectively, than is, or ever can be, in them are facts giving us persistent reason to rebel against such structures.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger The Religion of the Future

Source: The Religion of the Future (2014), p. 385

Life, World, Religion, Future

“Realism's 'truth' as embodied in painting and literature now solely consists of things capable of being seen by the eye or heard by the ear. Realism is concerned only with the external shell of nature. People content with the discoveries they have made ignore the fact that there are other things to be discovered, even broader avenues to be explored. They have found bacteria, but not what they consist of. [quote of 1892)”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

OKK 1760 (Nice, January 1892); as quoted in Edvard Much – behind the scream, Sue Prideaux; Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007, p. 81
1880 - 1895

People, Quotes, Literature, Nature

“Mind from its object differs most in this:
Evil from good; misery from happiness;
The baser from the nobler; the impure
And frail, from what is clear and must endure.
If you divide suffering and dross, you may
Diminish till it is consumed away;
If you divide pleasure and love and thought,
Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not
How much, while any yet remains unshared,
Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared:
This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw
The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law
By which those live, to whom this world of life
Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife
Tills for the promise of a later birth
The wilderness of this Elysian earth.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Epipsychidion

Source: Epipsychidion (1821), l. 174

Love, Life, Pleasure, World

“The goodness and greatness of a man do not justify us in accepting a belief upon the warrant of his authority, unless there are reasonable grounds for supposing that he knew the truth of what he was saying. And there can be no grounds for supposing that a man knows that which we, without ceasing to be men, could not be supposed to verify.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority

Men

“To wonder what was so radical about a movement which seemed to demand "only" the cessation of fraudulent work, is to fail to perceive the inner truth of the valid assumption, made on every side, of the connection between frame-breaking and sedition. As if the fight by the producer for the integrity of his work-life can be made without calling the whole of capitalism into question. The demand for the cessation of fraudulent work necessarily becomes a cataclysm, an all-or-nothing battle insofar as it is pursued; it leads directly to the heart of the capitalist relationship and its dynamic.”

John Zerzan (1943) American anarchist and primitivist philosopher and author

Source: Elements of Refusal (1988), pp. 108-109

Life, Question, Heart, Fight

“If the road to social transformation can be paved only by saints who never make mistakes, the road will never be built. The upside is that we don’t have to be perfect to save our communities and restore the Earth. We just have to try hard and be as honest as we can be about the processes we are going through. So I share the mistakes and failures, as well as the successes, because that is the truth of my journey – and of anyone’s journey.”

Van Jones (1968) American environmental advocate and civil rights activist

Statement in a 2007 New York Times interview, quoted in "Bridging the gap between environmental and social justice" by Lauren Rabaino, in Mustang News (April 4, 2008) http://mustangnews.net/bridgingthegapbetweenenvironmentalandsocialjustice/

Communication, Failure, Success, Perfection

“The outbreak of cholera in Zimbabwe became a symbol of that country's collapse — but who noticed the spread of cholera across Iraq? The McCainiacs chorused that "the surge worked" — but a study by the journal Environment and Planning found the truth. Between 2003 and 2007, Iraq was ripped by a massive ethnic cleansing. The mixed Sunni-Shia areas were destroyed. By the time the surge started, there was nobody left to purge: the country was carved into ethnically homogeneous neighbourhoods. All the surge did was build vast concrete walls between the collapsing hoods, cementing the cleansing. That's success?”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

"What did we misjudge in 2008?," http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-what-did-we-misjudge-in-2008-1202269.html The Independent (2008-12-18).

Study, Time, Success, Country

“There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each differently.”

Robert Evans

[Robert Evans, 2002, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0303353, The Kid Stays in the Picture, Documentary, Highway Films]
The unreliable narrator

Lying, Memory

“In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

Way, Sense

“Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

As quoted in The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) by John Cook, Steve Deger and Leslie Ann Gibson, p. 525
Attributed

Sense

“Intelligence, then, is the ability to attain goals in the face of obstacles by means of decisions based on rational (truth-obeying) rules. The computer scientists Allen Newell and Herbert Simon fleshed this idea out further by noting that intelligence consists of specifying a goal, assessing the current situation to see how it differs from the goal, and applying a set of operations that reduce the difference. Perhaps reassuringly, by this definition human beings, not just aliens, are intelligent. We have desires, and we pursue them using beliefs, which, when all goes well, are at least approximately or probabilistically true.”

Steven Pinker book How the Mind Works

Source: How the Mind Works (1997), p. 62

Intelligence, Idea, Decision

“The audacity of the man would have seemed sublime if she had felt sure that he knew the difference between good and evil, between a lie and the truth; but the more she saw of him, the surer she was that his courage was mere moral paralysis, and that he talked about virtue and vice as a man who is colour-blind talks about red and green; he did not see them as she saw them; if left to choose for himself he would have nothing to guide him. Was it politics that had caused this atrophy of the moral senses by disuse? Meanwhile, here she sat face to face with a moral lunatic.”

Henry Adams book Democracy: An American Novel

Madeleine Lee assessing Senator Silas P. Ratcliffe in Ch. XIII
Democracy: An American Novel (1880)

Lie, Courage, Sense, Evil

“The rash assertion that 'God made man in His own image' is ticking like a time bomb at the foundation of many faiths, and as the hierarchy of the universe is disclosed to us, we may have to recognize this chilling truth: if there are any gods whose chief concern is man, they cannot be very important gods.”

Arthur C. Clarke (1917–2008) British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, undersea explorer, and television series host

Space and the Spirit of Man (1965)

God, Faith, Universe, Time

“Though that at the beginning miracles were shewed through such ceremonies, to move the infidels to believe the word of God, as thou readest how the apostles anointed the sick with oil, and healed them; and Paul sent his pertelet or jerkin to the sick, and healed them also; yet was it not the ceremony that did the miracle, but faith of the preacher and the truth of God, which had promised to confirm and stablish his gospel with such miracles.”

William Tyndale (1494–1536) Bible translator and agitator from England

The Obedience of A Christian Man (1528)

God, Faith

“Today, in the streets ordinary Fijians are talking about the truth and cleanliness, which is hard to find in this government. This is because all these years ordinary Fijians like me have been used by elite Fijians and foreigners who provide money to carry out their illegal activities.”

Josaia Waqabaca Fijian politician

Interview, 11 January 2006

Money

“He knows that I am speaking the truth, for no worm ever gnawed old wood.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

Ei sa che 'l vero parlo:
ché legno vecchio mai non róse tarlo.
Canzone 360, st. 5
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Death

“A perception, sudden as blinking, that subject and object are one, will lead to a deeply mysterious understanding; and by this understanding you will awaken to the truth.”

Huangbo Xiyun Chinese Zen Buddhist

The Wan Ling Record of Xiu Pei, quoted in Why Lazarus Laughed: The Essential Doctrine, Zen — Advaita — Tantra (2003) by Wei Wu Wei

Understanding

“In the root of the word "faith" itself… there is implicit the idea of confidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence is placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we perceive as something personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something impersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the person that gives us hope, that we believe, not directly or immediately in truth itself or in hope itself.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), IX : Faith, Hope, and Charity

Fate, Faith, Hope, Confidence

“On Another Country "You are not a Communist because you understand Marx, you understand Marx because you are a Communist!" - that is to say, Judd understands Marx because he presupposes in advance, that Marx is the bearer of knowledge enabling access to the truth of history, like the Christian believer who does not believe in Christ because he has been convinced by theological arguments but, on the contrary, is susceptible to theological arguments because he is already illuminated by the grace of belief.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

41
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

History, Understanding, Knowledge, Christ

“I was run over by the truth one day.
Ever since the accident I've walked this way”

Adrian Mitchell (1932–2008) British writer

"To Whom It May Concern", from Adrian Mitchell's Greatest Hits (1991)
Written in 1965, after hearing British troops might be sent to the Vietnam War.

Way

“Error is a hardy plant; it flourisheth in every soil;
In the heart of the wise and good, alike with the wicked and foolish;
For there is no error so crooked, but it hath in it some lines of truth;
Nor is any poison so deadly, that it serveth not some wholesome use.”

Martin Farquhar Tupper (1810–1889) English writer and poet

Of Truth in Things False.
Proverbial Philosophy (1838-1849)

Error, Heart

“Mental illness, of course, is not literally a "thing" — or physical object — and hence it can "exist" only in the same sort of way in which other theoretical concepts exist. Yet, familiar theories are in the habit of posing, sooner or later — at least to those who come to believe in them — as "objective truths" (or "facts"). During certain historical periods, explanatory conceptions such as deities, witches, and microorganisms appeared not only as theories but as self-evident causes of a vast number of events. I submit that today mental illness is widely regarded in a somewhat similar fashion, that is, as the cause of innumerable diverse happenings. As an antidote to the complacent use of the notion of mental illness — whether as a self-evident phenomenon, theory, or cause — let us ask this question: What is meant when it is asserted that someone is mentally ill?
In what follows I shall describe briefly the main uses to which the concept of mental illness has been put. I shall argue that this notion has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had and that it now functions merely as a convenient myth.”

Thomas Szasz book The Myth of Mental Illness

"The Myth of Mental Illness" in American Psycholigist, Vol. 15 (1960), p. 113 http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Szasz/myth.htm

Way, Fashion, Question, Appearance

“I rejoice to hear that you have begun Homer's Iliad; and have made so great a progress in Virgil. I hope you taste and love those authors particularly. You cannot read them too much: they are not only the two greatest poets, but they contain the finest lessons for your age to imbibe: lessons of honour, courage, disinterestedness, love of truth, command of temper, gentleness of behaviour, humanity, and in one word, virtue in its true significance.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Letter to his nephew, Thomas Pitt (12 October 1751), quoted in W. S. Taylor and J. H. Pringle (eds.), The Correspondence of William Pitt, Earl of Chatham (London: 1838), p. 62.

Love, Age, Hope, Courage

“Ninety-nine percent of what my father ever wrote or said about himself to the press, the media, the public and the membership is totally and completely untrue and false. So therefore that old phrase "Consider the source" cannot just be applied to me but must be applied to him also. And this phrase, "Consider the source" is in itself totally and completely inaccurate and is only a statement to dead-agent both myself and my father— or anyone else for that matter. What is appropriate, true and accurate is: "Consider the facts and consider the truth."”

Ronald DeWolf (1934–1991) American critic of Scientology

Taped Message (1984)

Falseness, Dead

“Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,—
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

Truth, line 327.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson — and I am not wholly excepting the Administration of W. W. The country is going through a repetition of Jackson's fight with the Bank of the United States — only on a far bigger and broader basis.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Letter to Col. Edward Mandell House (21 November 1933); as quoted in F.D.R.: His Personal Letters, 1928-1945, edited by Elliott Roosevelt (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1950), pg. 373
1930s

Fight, Country

“That's where the truth lies, right down here in the gut. Do you know you have more nerve endings in your gut than you have in your head? You can look it up. I know some of you are going to say "I did look it up, and that's not true." That's 'cause you looked it up in a book. Next time, look it up in your gut. I did. My gut tells me that's how our nervous system works.”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

White House Correspondents' Association Dinner (2006)

Books, Time

“At this point, here is a parenthesis about the life of the author, which joined the deed to the word: Hélène included to the book on her father, a very short Appendix, "Le devoir d'abolir la guerre", which was taken from the second volume of the Germen works or Spir, and had previously been reproduced, I quote, "in the Jounal de Genève, 15 November 1920, at the time of the maiden Assembly of the United Nations, which Spir has, lately (not long ago, "naguère", Fr.) so much called for (or invite to think about) of all his wishes." ("tant appelée de ses voeux", Fr). The following is a footnote added to this text, that Spir published in the first edition of Recht und Unrecht, in 1879, as an Appendix, under the title of "Considération sur la guerre" - and which was published again in 1931, in Propos sur la guerre. : "To declare (or say) that the establishment of international institutions intended (or used) to settle (or solve) conflicts among people without having recourse to war, this is purely gratuitious affirmation. What sense (or meaning) can it be to declare impossible, something that has been neither wished (or wanted, "voulue", Fr.) seriously, nor tried to put into practice? In truth, there are not any impossibility here, no more of a material order than of a metaphysical order. ("En vérité, il n'y a ici aucun impossibilité, pas plus d'ordre matériel que d'ordre métaphysique", Fr). Supposing that all responsible potentates, ministers and leaders were to be warned (or were given formal notice? - "soient mis en demeure de", Fr.) to agree concerning the establishment (or creation) of international organizations with peaceful workings ("à rouages pacifiques", Fr.), they would not be very long to come to an agreement on the ways and means ("voies et moyens", Fr.) to come to settle the problem. And, indeed, how insoluble could be a problem, that requires nothing else than some good will here and there? It is not a question here of fighting against a terrestrial power, hostile to human beings and independent of their will; it is only for men a matter of overcoming their own passions, et their harmful prejudices. ("En cela", Fr.) In this, would it be more difficult than to kill one's fellow men by the hundred of thousands, de destroy entire (or whole) countries et inflict (or impose) crushing expanses to one own people?"”

African Spir (1837–1890) Russian philosopher

Source: Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937), pp. 64-65 - end of parenthesis.

Life, Men, Hostility, War

“It is Christianity, I believe, that truly faces the facts of reality. The Christian does not try to create his or her own reality. Our search for the truth leads us to Christ. Faith costs something (as all things of worth do) and obedience is hard, but God has poured out His love for us and given us the grace that empowers us to obey.”

Donald Miller (1971) American writer

Prayer and the Art of Volkswagen Maintenance (2000, Harvest House Publishers)

Love, God, Faith, Search

“He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.”

Haruki Murakami book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995)

“Undoubtedly it is our duty, and for our best good, that we occupy and improve the faculties, with which our creator has endowed us, but so far as prejudice, or prepossession of opinion prevails over our minds, in the same proportion, reason is excluded from our theory or practice. Therefore if we would acquire useful knowledge, we must first divest ourselves of those impediments and sincerely endeavor to search out the truth: and draw our conclusions from reason and just argument, which will never conform to our inclination, interest or fancy but we must conform to that if we would judge rightly.”

Ethan Allen (1738–1789) American general

Source: Reason: The Only Oracle Of Man (1784), Ch. XIII Section II - Of The Importance of the Exercise of Reason, and Practice of Morality, in order to the Happiness of Mankind

Search, Knowledge, Drawing, Sincerity

“Natural science must therefore, in truth, be declared silent on this question of pantheism; as indeed it is, and from the nature of the case must be, upon all theories of the supersensible alike — theistic, deistic, atheistic, pantheistic. Natural science has no proper concern with such theories.”

George Holmes Howison (1834–1916) American philosopher

Source: The Limits of Evolution, and Other Essays, Illustrating the Metaphysical Theory of Personal Ideaalism (1905), Modern Science and Pantheism, p.97

Question, Nature, Science

“I have no need to take up each thing that wants to throw its cause on us and show that it is occupied only with itself, not with us, only with its good, not with ours. Look at the rest for yourselves. Do truth, freedom, humanity, justice, desire anything else than that you grow enthusiastic and serve them?”

Max Stirner book The Ego and Its Own

Cambridge 1995, p. 6
The Ego and Its Own (1845)

Justice, Freedom

“Throughout my advocacy of the University's cause I had experienced the truth of Goethe's maxim that it is best, if you wish to influence people, to begin by assuming that they are already what you would have them to be.”

Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan (1873–1952) British judge

Source: A Man of Law's Tale (1952), In London, p. 265

People, Universe

“Responsible journalism is hard. It isn't public relations. A responsible journalist digs for the truth, she doesn't just take her subject's agenda and run with it. That isn't journalism, that's "gossip," and like all gossip, it doesn't do anything positive for anyone.”

Marc Randazza (1969) American writer

“Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.”

Denis Diderot (1713–1784) French Enlightenment philosopher and encyclopædist

Apology for the Abbé de Prades (1752)

“One should follow a man of wisdom who rebukes one for one's faults, as one would follow a guide to some buried treasure. To one who follows such a wise man, it will be an advantage and not a disadvantage.
…
These teachings are like a raft, to be abandoned once you have crossed the flood. Since you should abandon even good states of mind generated by these teachings, how much more so should you abandon bad states of mind!
…
Conquer the angry man by love.
Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness.
Conquer the miser with generosity.
Conquer the liar with truth.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

Gautama Buddha, Dhammapada
Unclassified

Love, Wisdom, Nature

“Money only buys the illusion of power. Real power is in the force of will — will strong enough that others bend to it for its own sake, and follow it willingly. Power that is won through deception will evaporate under the hot light of truth.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Homecoming saga, The Call Of Earth (1992)

Money, Light, Strong

“I deny and utterly scout the idea, that there is now, properly speaking, any such thing as a negro problem before the American people. It is not the negro, educated or illiterate, intelligent or ignorant, who is on trial, or whose qualities are giving trouble to the nation… The real question, the all-commanding question, is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American Christianity can be made to include and protect, alike and forever, all American citizens… It is whether this great nation shall conquer its prejudices, rise to the dignity of its professions, and proceed in the sublime course of truth and liberty marked out for itself during the late war, or shall swing back to its ancient moorings of slavery and barbarism. The trouble is that the colored people have still to contend against ’a fierce and formidable foe,’ the ghost of a by-gone, dead and buried institution.”

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

Speech http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/

War, People, Education, Justice

“Real truth was out there in the shattered outhabs of Vervun hive. Real truth was waiting and silence, courage and stealth. Real truth was the ability to function in extremes. To fire a cannon and miss and try again. To fix a silver blade to the end of a las-weapon and leap from safety into a shroud of smoke, prepared as you did so to really use that makeshift spear. Real truth was a tiny hole in a man's forehead.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

In Remembrance (2005)

Courage, Silence, Waiting

“We know so well what we are doing ourselves and why we do it, do we not? I fancy that there is some truth in the view which is being put forward nowadays, that it is our less conscious thoughts and our less conscious actions which mainly mould our lives and the lives of those who spring from us.”

Samuel Butler book The Way of All Flesh

Source: The Way of All Flesh (1903), Ch. 5

Spring

“I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make despair pause. For in truth we who are creatures of impulse are not creatures of despair.”

Joseph Conrad book Chance

Chance (1913), part I, Ch. 6

Despair

“Herzen was closer to the truth when he said that every memory calls up a dozen others. The real miracle of Proust is the discipline with which he stemmed the flow. Everything is a Madeleine.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

Source: Memoirs, Unreliable Memoirs (1980), p. 56

Memory

“But the truth is, I don't have ADD. I have OKHY: OK, hell yeah.”

Josh Homme (1973) American musician

" Queens of the Stone Age: Josh Homme comes back from the brink http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/jun/01/queens-stone-age-like-clockwork" The Guardian (June 1, 2013)

Hell

“Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal,” the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the “concept” of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 133-134

Justice, Search, Knowledge, Universe

“Some things
You have to let be lost
Some battles, some battles
You have to leave unfought.Then the truth just wastes away
In all we dare not say.
And in all we can't explain
But I faithfully remain.”

Ben Harper (1969) singer-songwriter and musician

Faithfully Remain.
Song lyrics, White Lies for Dark Times (2009)

“As mathematical and absolute certainty is seldom to be attained in human affairs, reason and public utility require that judges and all mankind in forming their opinions of the truth of facts should be regulated by the superior number of the probabilities on the one side or the other whether the amount of these probabilities be expressed in words and arguments or by figures and numbers.”

William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield (1705–1793) British judge

Reported in Andrew Stuart, Letters to the Right Honorable Lord Mansfield (1773), p. 29.

Mathematics

“It is hardly possible not to suspect the truth of this doctrine of atonement, when we consider that the general maxims to which it may be reduced, are nowhere laid down, or asserted, in the Scriptures, but others quite contrary to them.”

Joseph Priestley book An History of the Corruptions of Christianity

Part II : Opinions Relating to the Doctrine of Atonement, § I : That Christ did not die to make satisfaction for the sins of men.
An History of the Corruptions of Christianity (1782)

“The need to speak the truth and even to seek it for oneself is only conceivable in so far as the individual thinks and acts as one of a society, and not of any society (for it is just the constraining relations between superior and inferior that often drive the latter to prevarication) but of a society founded on reciprocity and mutual respect, and therefore on cooperation.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

Source: The Moral Judgment of the Child (1932), Ch. 2 : Adult Constraint and Moral Realism

Thinking

“We used to think that secrecy was perhaps the greatest enemy of democracy, and as long as there was no suppression or censorship, people could be trusted to make the informed decisions that would preserve our free society, but we have learned in recent years that the techniques of misinformation and misdirection have become so refined that, even in an open society, a cleverly directed flood of misinformation can overwhelm the truth, even though the truth is out there, uncensored, quietly available to anyone who can find it.”

Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Breaking the Spell (2006)

People, Democracy, Thinking, Decision

“Symptoms are meaningless traces, their meaning is not discovered, excavated from the hidden depth of the past, but constructed retroactively - the analysis produces the truth; that is, the signifying frame which gives their symptoms their symbolic place and meaning. As soon as we enter the symbolic order, the past is always present in the form of historical tradition and the meaning of these traces is not given; it changes continually with the transformations of the signifier's network. Every historical rupture, every advent of a new master-signifier, changers retroactively the meaning of all tradition, restructures the narration of the past, and makes it readable in another, new way.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

58
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Way, Change, Past

“Truth leads one to glory now and forever. In this world truth and falsehood are found confusedly mixed yet it is truth alone that triumphs here and hereafter.”

Sarvajna Kannada poet, pragmatist and philosopher

Flowers of Wisdom

World

“Everyone lets the present moment slip by, and then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this. But while grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. Once a man has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bear his truth in mind.”

Rati Tsiteladze (1987) Georgian Filmmaker

As Quoted in The Gerorgian Times in 2008 http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=12354.eng

Understanding, Personality

“Thou art a retailer of phrases, and dost deal in remnants of remnants, like a maker of pincushions; thou art in truth (metaphorically speaking) a speaker of shorthand.”

William Congreve The Way of the World

Act IV, scene ix
The Way of the World (1700)

Art

“Ansige unreeled the tale of his tribulations, thoroughly ransacking the truth and then dipping into the bag of embellishment and sprinkling with a free hand.”

Karen Lord (1968) Barbadian novelist and sociologist of religion

Source: Redemption in Indigo (2010), Chapter 2 “Ansige Eats Lamb and Murders a Peacock” (p. 17)

“If I could act like
This was my real life,
And not some cage where I've been placed,
Well then, I could tell you
The truth like I used to
And not be afraid of sounding fake.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

False Advertising
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Life

“The power of a free people is often at the disposal of a single and seemingly an unimportant individual; — a terrible and truthful power; for such a people feel with one heart, and therefore can lift up their myriad arms for a single blow. And, again, there is no graduated scale for the measurement of the influences of different intellects upon the popular mind. Peter the Hermit held no office, yet what a work he wrought!”

Albert Pike book Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry

Source: Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), Ch. II : The Fellow-Craft, p. 43

People, Feeling, Heart

“How close men, despite all their knowledge, usually live to madness? What is truth but to live for an idea? When all is said and done, everything is based on a postulate; but not until it no longer stands on the outside, not until one lives in it, does it cease to be a postulate. (Dialectic - Dispute)”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals of Søren Kierkegaard 1A75, 1835
1830s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1830s

Men, Idea, Knowledge, Madness

“We voluntaryists believe that no true progress can be made until we frankly recognize the great truth that every individual, who lives within the sphere of his own rights, as a self-owner, and has not himself first aggressed upon others by employing force or fraud in his dealings with them [and thus deprived himself of his own rights of self-ownership by aggressing upon these same rights of others], is the only one true owner of his own faculties, and his own property.”

Auberon Herbert (1838–1906) British politician

The Principles of Voluntaryism and Free Life

Fraud

“My next shall be a more sober & chastised Epistle — but you see I was in the humour for metaphors — and to tell thee the Truth, I have so often serious reasons to quarrel with my Inclination, that I do not chuse to contradict it for Trifles.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Letter to Robert Southey (6 July 1794)
Letters

“and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

34
50 Poems (1940)

For Father, Love, Men, Hate

“The principles upon which this nation was founded are those upon which its survival, no less than its prosperity, depend. These are the principles upon which we believe our freedom and prosperity as individuals, and that of our children depend. These principles are simple and familiar enough for anyone to understand who wishes to understand. Selfish motives, miseducation, or ideological blindness may lead some to deny or disparage them. But nothing can obscure their shining truth… Lincoln at Gettysburg said that the nation, at its birth, had been dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Earlier, Lincoln had said that the proposition of equality was the 'central idea' of the founding, from which all its minor thoughts emanated.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, God Bless America (2008)

Men, Children, Motivation, Idea

“Isn’t science, as some maintain, based on a “faith” that it’s good to pursue the truth? Hardly. The notion that knowledge is better than ignorance is not a quasi-religious faith, but a preference: we prefer to know the truth because accepting what’s false doesn’t give us useful answers about the universe.”

Jerry Coyne book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible

Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 211

Faith, Knowledge, Universe, Science

“I, for one, shall speak about those obstinate Greeks, who are with us and against us, united in faith and divided in peace, though in truth their faith may stray from the straight path.”
Ego addo et de pertinacia Græcorum, qui nobiscum sunt, et nobiscum non sunt, juncti fide, pace divisi, quanquam et in fide ipsa claudicaverint a semitis rectis.

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) French abbot, theologian

De Consideratione http://www.binetti.ru/bernardus/10.shtml (1149-1152), lib. III (1152), c. I; Book of Considerations, part III, ch. I <br class="br">"Greeks" refers to the (Eastern) Orthodox Church.

Peace, Faith

“You survived not to live on
your time is short, you have to give a proof of truth”

Zbigniew Herbert (1924–1998) Polish writer

Message of Mr. Cogito.
Quoes

Time

“Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”

Robert Charles Wilson book Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 361

“Christ's method is divine. His words have the charm of antiquity with the freshness of yesterday; the simplicity of a child with the wisdom of a God; the softness of kisses from the lip of love, and the force of the lightning rending the tower. His parables are like groups of matchless statuary; His prayers like an organ peal floating round the world and down the ages, echoed by the mountain-peaks and plains into rich and varied melody, in which all devout hearts find their noblest feelings at once expressed, sustained, refined. His truths are self-evidencing. They fall into the soul as seed into the ground, to rest and germinate. He speaks, and all nature and life become vocal with theology.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 63.

Love, Life, Wisdom, God

“Feeling is its own law and truth.”

Martin Firrell (1963) British artist and activist

"The Question Mark Inside" (2008)

Law, Feeling

“In truth, many of the challenges faced by Sanatana Dharma have been self-created. We can blame others and point out the impact of globalization, foreign rule and other religions—and, perhaps, they can be blamed to a certain extent—but they are not the primary cause. The primary cause is our carelessness: we have failed to cherish and protect the invaluable wealth that is this culture. More accurately, we have not been courageous enough to do so. We ourselves have been digging the grave into which this culture of vast and ancient knowledge could become buried.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Practice Spiritual Values & Save the World (2013)

Religion, Courage, Knowledge, Wealth

“When I really believe a thing, I mean that its truth possesses me... Truth is self-authenticating, and when it possesses me, nothing can shake it from its enthronement until some greater truth displaces it or gives it less prominence.”

Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) English theologian

Source: The Christian Agnostic (1965), p.31 ,[ellipsis added]

“His [Champlain's] books mark the man,—all for his theme and his purpose, nothing for himself. Crude in style, full of the superficial errors of carelessness and haste, rarely diffuse, often brief to a fault, they bear on every page the palpable impress of truth.”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Pt. II, Ch. 17 Death of Champlain
Pioneers of France in the New World (1865)

Books, Error

“For the Able Man, meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of Falsity and Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order: into what absurdest element soever you put him, he is there to make it a little less absurd, to fight continually with it till it become a little sane and human again. Peace on other terms he, for his part, cannot make with it; not he, while he continues able, or possessed of real intellect and not imaginary. There is but one man fraught with blessings for this world, fated to diminish and successively abolish the curses of the world; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and follow; know that to find him or miss him, means victory or defeat for you, in all Downing Streets, and establishments and enterprises here below.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1850s, Latter-Day Pamphlets (1850), Downing Street (April 1, 1850)

Fate, World, Peace, Search

“You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it.”

George Harrison (1943–2001) British musician, former member of the Beatles

The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 267

People

“Think of lab rats racing through a maze, when you watch the sub-intelligent, dual-panel 'dialogue' … Each rat runs with a designated, neatly bifurcated (Republican or Democratic) political orthodoxy. Each is a 'maze-bright' rat, and not the possessor and giver of any truth.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"'Left' and 'Right' Bamboozling You on Benghazi" http://www.americandailyherald.com/pundits/ilana-mercer/item/left-and-right-bamboozling-you-on-benghazi, American Daily Herald, January 13, 2014. <br class="br">2010s, 2014

Intelligence, Thinking

“The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder…
Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

The Failure of Christianity (1913)

Love, Fear, Idea

“The courage to cooperate or initiate are based entirely on the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth as the divine mind within you tells you the truth is. It really does require a courage and a self-disciplining to go along with that truth.”

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

From 1980s onwards, Only Integrity is Going to Count (1983)

Courage

“Scientific truth, like puristic truth, must come about by controversy. Personally this view is abhorrent to me. It seems to mean that scientific truth must transcend the individual, that the best hope of science lies in its greatest minds being often brilliantly and determinedly wrong, but in opposition, with some third, eclectically minded, middle-of-the-road nonentity seizing the prize while the great fight for it, running off with it, and sticking it into a textbook for sophomores written from no point of view and in defense of nothing whatsoever. I hate this view, for it is not dramatic and it is not fair; and yet I believe that it is the verdict of the history of science.”

Edwin Boring (1886–1968) American psychologist

Source: History, psychology, and science. 1963, p. 68; Paper "The Psychology of Coutroversy", (1929)

Hate, Hope, History, Science

“Obviously, the truth is what's so. Not so obviously, it's also so what.”

Werner Erhard (1935) Critical Thinker and Author

[175, Larson's Book of World Religions and Alternative Spirituality, Bob Larson, Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 2004, 084236417X]
Attributed

“All religions are incorporated in the principle of Truth, Simplicity and Love.”

Haidakhan Babaji teacher in northern India

December 1981
The Teachings of Babaji

Love, Religion

“The purpose of writing is both to keep up with life and to run ahead of it. I am little comfort to myself, although I am the only comfort I have, excepting perhaps streets, clouds, the sun, the faces and voices of kids and the aged, and similar accidents of beauty, innocence, truth and loneliness.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)

Life, Age, Beauty, Sun

“I am the truth-teller. I tried never to be mean, but Simon did tell me at one point. 'Doug, if you tell the truth, you don't have a choice.”

Doug Hall (1944) American television personality

Denver Post Doug Hall of "Inventor" invents a lot, but not the truth http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3645379

“Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1830s, Sir Walter Scott (1838)

Past

“This code is indispensable. Be it a case of commerce, industry, politics, religion, war or philanthropy in every concern there is a management function to be performed and for its performance there must be principles, that is to say acknowledged truths regarded as proven on which to rely.”

Henri Fayol (1841–1925) Developer of Fayolism

Source: General and industrial management, 1919/1949, p. 42-43 cited in: John B. Miner (2006) Historical Origins, Theoretical Foundations, And the Future. p. 114

War, Religion

Quotes about the truth page 60

Quotes about the truth
page 60