Quotes about the truth
page 78

Jason Reynolds photo

“The truths are universal: Every kid knows fear. Every kid knows family and friendship. Loss, love, laughter. Everything else is just detail.”

Jason Reynolds (1983) author of young adult novels

As quoted in[Rockey Fleming, Alexandra, Meet the Inspiring Author Who Writes Books He Wanted to Read Growing Up: 'Every Kid Knows Fear', https://people.com/human-interest/jason-reynolds-author-long-way-down/, People, 10 March 2020, October 24, 2017]

John Denham photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“The revolutionary principle introduced by Gandhi resolves the paradox of freedom. He called it satyagraha, "soul force" or "truth force."”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Satyagraha was essentially misunderstood in the West, described as "passive resistance," a term Gandhi disavowed because it suggests weakness, or "non-violence," which was just one of its components.
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Seven, Right Power

George Monbiot photo
Ron Paul photo
William Blum photo

“To the mind carefully brought to adulthood in the United States, the truths of anticommunism are self-evident, as self-evident as the flatness of the world once was to an earlier mind...”

William Blum (1933–2018) American author and historian

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Introduction

Anna J. Cooper photo

“To me, faith means treating the truth as true.”

Anna J. Cooper (1858–1964) African-American author, educator, speaker and scholar

Source: A Voice from the South by a Black Woman of the South (1892), p. 298

Noam Chomsky photo

“The sign of a truly totalitarian culture is that important truths simply lack cognitive meaning and are interpretable only at the level of "Fuck You", so they can then elicit a perfectly predictable torrent of abuse in response. We've long ago reached that level.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

letter to Alexander Cockburn (1 March 1990), later paraphrased in Deterring Democracy (1992) p. 345.
Quotes 1990s, 1990–1994

Alastair Reynolds photo

“There are certain truths that, in themselves, are as dangerous as any advanced technology.”

Source: Pushing Ice (2005), Chapter 30 (p. 435)

William Lane Craig photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Shaun Chamberlin photo

“Failure to live up to a truth doesn’t make it any less true, less worth striving for, or less worth defending.”

"Confessions of a Hypocrite: Utopia in the Age of Ecocide" Kosmos (2016) https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/confessions-of-a-hypocrite-utopia-in-the-age-of-ecocide/

Richard D. Wolff photo
Arun Shourie photo
Arun Shourie photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“The disposition to listen to the Truth (that is, obedience) and the readiness to act in the Truth constitute the true dignity of the human person.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

John Paul II. Teachings for an Unbelieving World . Ave Maria Press, Kindle Edition, March 2020

Colin Mackenzie photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo

“I absolutely reject the accusation that the Soviet leadership intentionally held back the truth about Chernobyl. We simply did not know the whole truth yet.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, Memoirs (1995)

“The human desire to be understood is never quite sincere. It is on our own terms that we desire to be understood, not on the terms of truth.”

Elizabeth Goudge (1900–1984) English fiction writer

The Child from the Sea (1970), Book 2, Chapter 1.5

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Wendell Berry photo

“By this time, the era of cut-and-run economics ought to be finished. Such an economy cannot be rationally defended or even apologized for. The proofs of its immense folly, heartlessness, and destructiveness are everywhere. Its failure as a way of dealing with the natural world and human society can no longer be sanely denied. That this economic system persists and grows larger and stronger in spite of its evident failure has nothing to do with rationality or, for that matter, with evidence. It persists because, embodied now in multinational corporations, it has discovered a terrifying truth: If you can control a people’s economy, you don’t need to worry about its politics; its politics have become irrelevant. If you control people’s choices as to whether or not they will work, and where they will work, and what they will do, and how well they will do it, and what they will eat and wear, and the genetic makeup of their crops and animals, and what they will do for amusement, then why should you worry about freedom of speech? In a totalitarian economy, any "political liberties" that the people might retain would simply cease to matter. If, as is often the case already, nobody can be elected who is not wealthy, and if nobody can be wealthy without dependence on the corporate economy, then what is your vote worth? The citizen thus becomes an economic subject.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Conserving Forest Communities"
Another Turn of the Crank (1996)

Wendell Berry photo
Marianne Williamson photo

“I haven’t heard anybody on this stage who has talked about American foreign policy in Latin America... There is an injustice that continues to form a toxicity underneath the surface, an emotional turbulence, people heal when there’s some deep truth-telling.”

Marianne Williamson (1952) American writer

We Desperately Need Marianne Williamson’s Message. https://theintercept.com/2019/08/05/marianne-williamson-2020-presidential-campaign/ The Intercept, Jon Schwarz (5 August 2019)

Jerry Coyne photo

“As we know, wokeness prizes ideology and narrative over truth.”

Jerry Coyne (1949) American biologist

" The New York Times touts Gwyneth Paltrow and “her other ways of knowing” https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2020/02/04/gwyneth-paltrow-and-her-other-ways-of-knowing-touted-in-the-nyt/" November 29, 2019

Henry David Thoreau photo

“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.”

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

"Natural History of Massachusetts" , The Dial (1842) https://archive.vcu.edu/english/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/nathist.html

Patañjali photo

“To overcome the obstacles and their accompaniments, the intense application of the will to some one truth (or principle) is required.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

José Martí photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“Surely it is important for America that the moral truths which make freedom possible should be passed on to each new generation. Every generation of Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) 264th Pope of the Catholic Church, saint

Source http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Oriole Park at Camden Yards, Baltimore, Sunday, 8 October 1995
Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20220416100400/https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html Archived] from [https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/homilies/1995/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_19951008_baltimore.html the original

George Carlin photo
Alan M. Dershowitz photo
Rodrigo Duterte photo

“But the truth is, I'm used to shooting people. When we were about to graduate from San Beda, I shot a person.”

Rodrigo Duterte (1945) Filipino politician and the 16th President of the Philippines

Original: (tl) Pero sa totoo lang, sanay ako magbaril ng tao. Mag-graduate na lang kami sa San Beda, may binaril akong tao.

Duterte: I shot a bully San Beda law student https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/130284-duterte-shot-bully-san-beda-student(April 21, 2016)

Donald J. Trump photo

“What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!”

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

Tweet, as quoted by * 2020-04-26

Trump says briefings 'not worth the effort' amid fallout from disinfectant comments

Lauren Aratani

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/25/donald-trump-stays-away-from-briefings-amid-fallout-from-disinfectant-comments
2020s, 2020, April

H.L. Mencken photo

“I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that all government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war upon liberty; and the democratic form is as bad as any of the other forms.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than be ignorant.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

"What I Believe" in The Forum 84 (September 1930), p. 139; some of these expressions were also used separately in other Mencken essays.
1930s

Joan of Arc photo

“Children say that people are hanged sometimes for speaking the truth.”

Joan of Arc (1412–1431) French folk heroine and Roman Catholic saint

From the trial transcript, as quoted in World Famous Women: Types of Female Heroism, Beauty, and Influence from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time (1881) by Frank Boott Goodrich, p. 126

Variant translation: There is a saying among children that sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth.

Swapan Dasgupta photo

“Some people (cabal members) who thought that they had a monopoly over truth and over wisdom found that the masses didn’t agree with them…These people are now confused …and want to say that they’re the repository of the entire truth and everything else is false consciousness.”

Swapan Dasgupta (1955) Indian politician, journalist and columnist

Swapan Dasgupta, a Rajya Sabha MP, in reference to the Lutyens’ cabal, had stated in a debate at Jaipur Literature Festival 2017, https://www.opindia.com/2020/04/lutyens-media-freedom-of-expression-siddharth-varadarajan-arnab-goswami-sonia-gandhi/

“The roots of struggle lie in the necessary truth that contradictions propel society forward.”

Jiang Shigong (1967) Chinese legal and political theorist

"Philosophy and History" (2018)

Paddy Ashdown photo

“I don't think Bosnia is ready for reconciliation, but I do think it is ready for truth.”

Paddy Ashdown (1941–2018) British politician and diplomat

As quoted in "Farewell, Sarajevo" https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/02/warcrimes.politics (1 November 2005), The Guardian

Bulleh Shah photo
Benjamin Creme photo
Alice A. Bailey photo

“To overcome the obstacles and their accompaniments, the intense application of the will to some one truth (or principle) is required.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

“It is ugly ducklings, grown either into swans or into remarkably big, remarkably ugly ducks, who are responsible for most works of art; and yet how few of these give a truthful account of what it was like to be an ugly duckling!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

it is almost as if the grown, successful swan had repressed most of the memories of the duckling’s miserable, embarrassing, magical beginnings. (The memories are deeply humiliating in two ways: they remind the adult that he was once more ignorant and gullible and emotional than he is; and they remind him that he once was, potentially, far more than he is.)

“An Unread Book”, p. 19
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)

Roger Scruton photo

“When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

"Should he have spoken?", The New Criterion (September 2006), p. 22; also in The Roger Scruton Reader (2009) edited by Mark Dooley

Paul J. McAuley photo

“It was both true, and not the complete truth, like so much of his talk.”

Paul J. McAuley (1955) British writer

Source: Four Hundred Billion Stars (1988), Chapter 3 “The Keep” (p. 197)

“The first quality of a leader of people – always the first quality – is a devotion to truth.”

Leon MacLaren (1910–1994) British philosopher

Leon MacLaren, Principles of Music, 1978

Ron Paul photo

“The people are looking for the truth and i do believe that truth will win out in the end.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Reflecting On The Past & Anticipating The Future, Ron Paul Liberty Report], YouTube (31 December 2019)
2019

Ron Paul photo

“Philosophy is much more important than politics, but we have to deal with politics because politics is the measuring rod of the philosophy... It's important that we... try to get the truth out...”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Reflecting On The Past & Anticipating The Future, Ron Paul Liberty Report], YouTube (31 December 2019)
2019

Ron Paul photo
Ron Paul photo

“The only time they tell the truth is when they admit that they are lying.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Possible Iran False Flag In Gulf Of Oman, With The US Already Caught In A Lie & Israel Attacks Syria, Ryan Cristian, The Last American Vagabond, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAiNqq14UF4 Video: 1 hour 14 mins, 18 secs, (13 June 2019)

Know More News About War with Iran, Ron Paul and Daniel McAdams, Ron Paul Liberty Report, soundbite from the Ron Paul Liberty Report on Adam Green's Know More News https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XDoDTYhLL4 Video: 37 mins, 34 secs, (17 June 2019)
2019

Kuvempu photo

“Winnow the chaff of a hundred creeds
Beyond these systems, hollow as reeds,
Turn unhorizened to where Truth leads,
To be unhoused, O my soul!”

Kuvempu (1904–1994) Kannada novelist, poet, playwright, critic, and thinker

Aniketana (1964)

Derek Parfit photo

“When agony is not present, no matter how imminent it looms, painful change must come from outside. This is a truth.”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 20, p. 157

Paul Rodriguez (actor) photo

“The truth is I never should have gotten involved…I'm not heartless. In spite of what they say, I'm not a vendido (sellout). I'm not trying to be a coconut. Is it being a vendido to want the best for your people and to speak your mind?”

Paul Rodriguez (actor) (1955) American comedian and actor

On endorsing Mitt Romney during the 2012 presidential election in “Comic Paul Rodriguez: 'I'm not a vendido (sellout)'” https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/arts/2016/04/18/paul-rodriguez-interview/83002880/ in azcentral.com (2016 Apr 18)

Alex Grey photo
Alex Grey photo
Adi Shankara photo
Adi Shankara photo

“Brahman (the existential substratum) is the only truth, the world is illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Brahman and individual self.”

Adi Shankara (788–820) Hindu philosopher monk of 8th century

Original: (hi) Brahma satyam jagat mithyam, jivo brahmaiva naparah

Carolina de Robertis photo

“At some point, the novelist has to leap head first into the pool of imagination in order to more freely explore the truth.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On thw work of a novelist in “Interviews: Carolina de Robertis” https://bookpage.com/interviews/24365-carolina-de-robertis-fiction#.Xebr8_lKjcs in BookPage (2019 Sep 3)

Horace photo

“My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.”

Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)
Original: (la) Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.

Book I, epistle i, line 11

Newton Lee photo
Pope John Paul II photo

“Truth enlightens man's intelligence and shapes his freedom.”

Veritatis Splendor §1
Veritatis Splendor (1993)

William Faulkner photo
Maria Weston Chapman photo

“Let us rise in the moral power of womanhood; and give utterance to the voice of outraged mercy, and insulted justice, and eternal truth, and mighty love and holy freedom.”

Maria Weston Chapman (1806–1885) American abolitionist

From [Boston Female Anti-slavery Society, Annual Report of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society, https://books.google.com/books?id=W5I5AQAAMAAJ, 1836, The Society, 30], as quoted in [Dell, Diana, Memorable Quotations: American Women Writers of the Past, https://books.google.com/books?id=eM3IWooc_zIC, December 2000, iUniverse, 978-0-595-16230-7, 73]

Henry Thomas Buckle photo
Francis Bacon photo

“In few words, mysteries are due to secrecy. Besides (to say truth) nakedness is uncomely, as well in mind as body; and it addeth no small reverence, to men's manners and actions, if they be not altogether open.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Simulation And Dissimulation

Francis Bacon photo

“Dissimulations is but a faint kind of policy, or wisdom; for it asketh a strong wit, and a strong heart, to know when to tell truth, and to do it. Therefore it is the weaker sort of politics, that are the great dissemblers.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Simulation And Dissimulation

Monier Monier-Williams photo

“But how is this previous process of elevating and Christianizing the men to be effected? We must begin with the schools... In this way we shall best prepare our Indian school-boys for a voluntary acceptance of Christian truth.”

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

Source: Modern India and the Indians, 1878. in Shourie, Arun (1994). Missionaries in India: Continuities, changes, dilemmas. New Delhi : Rupa & Co, 1994

Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet photo
Dennis Prager photo

“Truth is a liberal value, and it is a conservative value, but it is not a leftist value.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Source: 2010s, Why Most Jews Aren't Bothered By The Times' Anti-Semitic Cartoon (2019)

Bhagawan Nityananda photo
Ibn Hazm photo

“What is truth?”

J. L. Austin (1911–1960) English philosopher

said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.
"Truth", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 24, Issue 1, 9 July 1950 https://academic.oup.com/aristoteliansupp/article-abstract/24/1/111/1779429

Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Arthur Stanley Eddington photo
Matthew Arnold photo
Guy P. Harrison photo
Coventry Patmore photo
Coventry Patmore photo
Mikhail Gorbachev photo
Chris Carmack photo

“When I’m creating music, I don’t have an agenda for a sound or a genre or a message, I just want it to be truthful and representative of the lyrical content that means something to me, and the music that I love.”

Chris Carmack (1980) American actor and model

‘Nashville’ Star Chris Carmack on Introspective New EP: Ram Report https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/nashville-star-chris-carmack-on-introspective-new-ep-ram-report-188637/ (December 11, 2015)

Mary Church Terrell photo
Helena Roerich photo
John le Carré photo

“If I could generalize about my work in intelligence in those days, for better or worse, we counted ourselves an elite with a very considerable responsibility: to speak truth to power, like good journalists, that whatever we came upon, however offensive it was to those in power, we told it straight.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

John le Carré (1931-2020) on the Iraq War, Corporate Power, the Exploitation of Africa & More, Democracy Now! https://www.democracynow.org/2020/12/25/john_le_carre_1931_2020_on (25 December 2020)

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Enoch Powell photo

“So long as the figures 'now superseded' and the academic projections based upon them held sway, it was possible for politicians to shrug their shoulders. With so much of immediate and indisputable importance on their hands, why should they attend to what was forecast for the end of the century, when most of them would be not only out of office but dead and gone? … It was not for them to heed the cries of anguish from those of their own people who already saw their towns being changed, their native places turned into foreign lands, and themselves displaced as if by a systematic colonisation. For these the much vaunted compassion of the parties and politicians was not available: the parties and the politicians preferred to be busy making speeches on race relations; and if any of their number dared to tell them the truth, even less than the whole truth, about what was happening and what would happen here in England, they denounced them as racialist and turned them out of doors. They could feel safe; for they said in their hearts: 'If trouble comes, it will not be in our time; let the next generation see to it!'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

… The explosive which will blow us asunder is there and the fuse is burning, but the fuse is shorter than had been supposed. The transformation which I referred to earlier as being without even a remote parallel in our history, the occupation of the hearts of this metropolis and of towns and cities across England by a coloured population amounting to millions, this before long will be past denying. It is possible that the people of this country will, with good or ill grace, accept what they did not ask for, did not want and were not told of. My own judgment—it is a judgment which the politician has a duty to form to the best of his ability—I have not feared to give: it is—to use words I used two years and a half ago—that 'the people of England will not endure it'.
Source: Speech to the Carshalton and Banstead Young Conservatives at Carshalton Hall (15 February 1971), from Still to Decide (1972), pp. 202-203

John F. Kennedy photo
Johnny Chiang photo

“History (white terror in Taiwan) cannot be forgotten. There is no history that cannot be declassified, no truth that cannot be revealed.”

Johnny Chiang (1972) Taiwanese politician

Source: Johnny Chiang (2020) cited in " KMT’s Chiang visits human rights park https://taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2020/12/11/2003748529" on Taipei Times, 11 December 2020.

Aldous Huxley photo

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Neil Kinnock photo

“When I started to encounter Marxism at 16, the elementary truths of the surplus value theory and more than anything else, the logical argument that he produced that labour was the source of all wealth, gave me a political and intellectual justification for what I believed in a way that nothing else did.”

Neil Kinnock (1942) British politician

Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Science
Source: Interview with Sam Aaronovitch for Marxism Today (June 1983) http://banmarchive.org.uk/collections/mt/pdf/83_06_06.pdf