Quotes about the truth
page 78

“[B]iography is an essential part of human memory. We think about ourselves in terms of what we have done – our identity is constructed around our past. Are history and biography linked or just two parallel strands? Biographers and historians make choices about how to frame their subject, they draw together fragments to present a possible glimpse of the unattainable whole. An historian might have a thesis or method which drives his/her enquiry whereas a biographer has, perhaps, a particular view of an individual they wish to present. Neither presents the truth, only an interpretation.”

Dana Arnold (1961) Middlessex uni prof

Source: Reading Architectural History (2002), Ch. 2 : The authority of the author : Biography and the reconstruction of the canon

Making love, History, Thinking, Memory

“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]

Love, Friendship, Fear, Making love

“Nor at present, nor in the past, we have ever denied,
That your sense of justice is trumpeted far and wide.
Whatever has been happening, we also accept
Fell within the limits of law, with justice as your guide.
Even when you ordered firing on the helpless multitude,
You didn't even by a hair-breadth the law of land defied.
But this truth too cannot be lightly brushed aside,
Thay your act unleashed a deluge of death in the twinkling of an eye,
The handsome youth when they fell before your deadly fire],
Wondered if it was the doom, or the stars shooting from the [[sky.
The arch and pulpit of the mosque were left riddled with bullets,
But the mosque needs perhaps such patterns on its front and sides.
Fast-fettered did they watch, the convicts and the passers-by,
And the police took the stand: How can we, the servants, the sovereign's fiat defy?
But let's state the fact, you may or may not like,
We are the oppressed folk, you are not the oppressor, right!”

Shibli Nomani (1857–1914) Indian scholar

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 105
Poetry, Oppression

Death, Youth, Justice, Law

“Wisdom of what herself approves makes choice,
Nor is led captive by the common voice.
Clear-sighted Reason Wisdom's judgment leads,
And Sense, her vassal, in her footsteps treads.
That thou to Truth the perfect way may'st know,
To thee all her specific forms I'll show:
He that the way to honesty will learn,
First what's to be avoided must discern.
Thyself from flatt'ring self-conceit defend,
Nor what thou dost not know to know pretend.
Some secrets deep in abstruse darkness lie:
To search them thou wilt need a piercing eye.
Not rashly therefore to such things assent,
Which, undeceived, thou after may'st repent;
Study and time in these must thee instruct,
And others' old experience may conduct.
Wisdom herself her ear doth often lend
To counsel offer'd by a faithful friend.”

John Denham (1615–1669) English poet and courtier

Source: Of Prudence (1668), line 11

Wisdom, Lie, Secret, Making love

“I have seen the truth, Dostoevski said. It is not as though I had invented it with my mind. I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul forever.... In one day, one hour, everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Twelve, Human Connections: Relationships Changing

Love, Making love, Soul

“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

Soul, Freedom

“There are two ways this could go. We could, as some people have done, double down on denial. Some of those who have dismissed other threats, such as climate breakdown, also seek to downplay the threat of Covid-19... Or this could be the moment when we begin to see ourselves, once more, as governed by biology and physics, and dependent on a habitable planet. Never again should we listen to the liars and the deniers. Never again should we allow a comforting falsehood to trounce a painful truth. No longer can we afford to be dominated by those who put money ahead of life...”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

Covid-19 is nature's wake-up call to complacent civilisation https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/covid-19-is-natures-wake-up-call-to-complacent-civilisation?, The Guardian, 25 March 2020

Life, Money, Pain, People

“For many millions of Christians, Easter is a time to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Others may celebrate the arrival of spring and the promise of new life. Whatever one’s beliefs, after several weeks of mandatory “stay at home” orders and the complete shutdown of the US economy over the coronavirus, this self-destructive hysteria must end and we must reclaim the freedom and liberty that has provided us so much opportunity as Americans. To do that we should first understand that much of the hysteria is being generated by a mainstream media that has long prioritized sensationalism over investigating and reporting the truth. Government bureaucrats are also exaggerating the threat of this virus and appear to be enjoying the power and control that fearful people are willingly handing over to them. One “coronavirus” bureaucrat even told us that we can no longer go to the grocery store! So we should just starve? It is certainly possible to believe that this virus can be dangerous while at the same time pointing out that radical steps are being taken in our society – stay-at-home orders, introduction of de facto martial law, etc.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

with very little knowledge of just how deadly is this disease.
2020, End the Shutdown; It’s Time for Resurrection!

Life, People, Fear, Law

“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

World, Adulthood, Self-confidence

“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

Faith

“[W]hen you get to Rome you have two other rules to learn: never assume that what you see is what is; never believe that what you're told is the whole truth. It's only when you've grasped that — and the Romans know you've grasped it — that you begin to win respect and make progress.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Cardinal Francis Spellman in Book 1. London: Mandarin, 1993, p. 67
The Lovers (1993)

Making love, Learning

“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

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

Alastair Reynolds book Pushing Ice

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

“Third is the argument from truth:
# According to Dr. Rosenberg, if naturalism is true then there are no true sentences. That is because they are all meaningless.
# But, premise (1) is true. That is what the naturalist believes and asserts.
# Therefore, naturalism is not true.”

William Lane Craig (1949) American Christian apologist and evangelist

Nature

“If my years as a shatterling had taught me anything, it was that not all questions had answers. Societies had reduced themselves to radioactive dust because they could not accept that single unpalatable truth.”

Alastair Reynolds book House of Suns

Source: House of Suns (2008), Chapter 8 (pp. 84-85)

Question

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

Shaun Chamberlin

"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/

Making love, Failure

“The third reason capitalism gets blame here is that alternative systems—those not driven by a profit-first logic—could manage viruses better. While not profitable to produce and stockpile everything needed for a viral pandemic, it is efficient. The wealth already lost in this pandemic far exceeds the cost to have produced and stockpiled the tests and ventilators, the lack of which is contributing so much to today's disaster. Capitalism often pursues profit at the expense of more urgent social needs and values. In this, capitalism is grossly inefficient. This pandemic is now bringing that truth home to people.”

Richard D. Wolff (1942) American economist

COVID-19 and the Failures of Capitalism (2020)

People, Home, Wealth

“Once they had occupied academic bodies, once they had captured universities and thereby determined what will be taught, which books will be prescribed, what questions would be asked, what answers will be acceptable, these historians came to decide what history had actually been! As it suits their current convenience and politics to make out that Hinduism also has been intolerant, they will glide over what Ambedkar says about the catastrophic effect that Islamic invasions had on Buddhism, they will completely suppress what he said of the nature of these invasions and of Muslim rule in his Thoughts on Pakistan,3 but insist on reproducing his denunciations of ‘Brahmanism’, and his view that the Buddhist India established by the Mauryas was systematically invaded and finished by Brahmin rulers.
Thus, they suppress facts, they concoct others, they suppress what an author has said on one matter even as they insist that what he has said on another be taken as gospel truth. And when anyone attempts to point out what had in fact happened, they rise in chorus: a conspiracy to rewrite history, they shout, a plot to distort history, they scream. But they are the ones who have been distorting it in the first place – by suppressing the truth, by planting falsehoods.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Books, Making love, History, Question

“The most extensive deletions are ordered in regard to the chapter on ‘Aurangzeb’s policy on religion’. Every allusion to what he actually did to the Hindus, to their temples, to the very leitmotif of his rule – to spread the sway of Islam – are directed to be excised from the book. He is to be presented as one who had an aversion – an ordinary sort of aversion, almost a secular one – to music and dancing, to the presence of prostitutes in the court, and that it is these things he banished... In a word, no forcible conversions, no massacres, no destruction of temples. Just that Hinduism had created an exploitative, casteist society. Islam was egalitarian. Hence the oppressed Hindus embraced Islam!
Muslim historians of those times are in raptures at the heap of kafirs who have been dispatched to hell. Muslim historians are forever lavishing praise on the ruler for the temples he has destroyed, for the hundreds of thousands he has got to see the light of Islam. Law books like The Hedaya prescribe exactly the options to which these little textbooks alluded. All whitewashed away.
Objective whitewash for objective history. And today if anyone seeks to restore truth to these textbooks, the shout, ‘Communal rewriting of history’.”

Arun Shourie (1941) Indian journalist and politician

Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud (1998)

Books, Religion, Law, Music

“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

Personality

“All great and low, have their troubles, and we little men should not complain if we have our share. The only remedy is to move on in tranquility, guided by truth and integrity to the best of our judgement and avoiding all intrigue and chicanery.”

Colin Mackenzie (1754–1821) Surveyor General of India

Quoted in S. Balakrishna, Seventy years of secularism. 2018.

Men

“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

Sincerity

“The truth is that after the experiences of my wanderings across all of Latin America, and to top it off, in Guatemala, it didn’t take much to incite me to join any revolution against a tyrant, but Castro impressed me as an extraordinary man. He faced and overcame the most impossible things. He had an exceptional faith that once he left for Cuba, he would arrive. And that once he arrives, he would fight. And that fighting, he would win. I shared his optimism.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

As quoted in It Has Been 50 Years Since Che Guevara Was Murdered http://www.thenation.com/article/archive/it-has-been-50-years-since-che-guevara-was-murdered/, by Bill Ayers and Michael Steven Smith

Faith, Optimism, Fight

“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)

People, World, Way, Failure

“We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. This involves us in a sort of official madness, in which, while following what seems to be a perfect logic of self-defense and deterrence, we commit one absurdity after another: We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to "win the hearts and minds of the people" by poisoning their crops and burning their villages and confining them in concentration camps; we seek to uphold the "truth" of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations. … I have come to the realization that I can no longer imagine a war that I would believe to be either useful or necessary. I would be against any war.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Statement Against the War in Vietnam" an address at the University of Kentucky (10 February 1968) http://books.google.com/books?id=-hHNuLumg8wC&pg=PA68 The Long-Legged House (1969)

War, People, Peace, Imagination

“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)

People

“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

“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

Flowers

“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)

“One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Our America (1891)

Men, Hate, Faith, Time

“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

Making love, Freedom

“Some people try to get out of jury duty by lying. You don't have to lie. Tell the judge the truth. Tell him you'd make a terrific juror because you can spot guilty people [snaps fingers] just like that!”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

What Am I Doing in New Jersey? (1988)

People, Lie, Making love, Lying

“We hope that the end result is a just verdict that is also truthful, even though all sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth.”

Alan M. Dershowitz (1938) American lawyer, author

U.S. News & World Report (August 9, 1982)

Hope

“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)

People, Personality

“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

Hostility, People, Question, Effort

“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

War, Bad luck, Lie, World

“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.

Children, People

“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/

Wisdom, People, Falseness

“It may be concluded that Sankara accepts Yoga as a practical discipline for the realization of Truth and sees no contradiction between Yoga and Vedanta.”

Govind Chandra Pande (1923–2011) Indian historian

Life and Thought of Sankaracharya (1998)

“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)

Lie

“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

Thinking

“If I tell a lie, something is left out;
If I speak out the truth, there is a blaze.
My mind fears both the alternatives,
But haltingly my tongue speaks out.
Words that come to my tongue cannot be held back.
If I were to unravel the mysteries,
All would forget to discuss and debate.
They would then kill our friend Bullah,
For only the hidden truth befits here.”

Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) Punjabi poet

Bulleh Shah, The Love-Intoxicated Iconoclast, p. 130
Poetry

Lie, Fear, Forgetting

“Two thousand six hundred years ago, Gautama Buddha made a prediction that at this time would come another great teacher who would inspire humanity to create a new and brilliant golden civilization based on righteousness and truth. His name would be Maitreya, a Buddha like Himself.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Maitreya's Mission Vol. II (1993)

Teachers, Time

“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)

Art

“We have no time, we have no space,
we are questions that love answers,
but the veil of truth don't lift.
In the edge of abyss,
people really meet themselves,
when they're staring at nothingness,
and then they understand
that we are, 'birds of passage'.”

alexis karpouzos

spirituality and consciousness

Love, People, Making love, Understanding

“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

Making love

“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

People

“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

People

“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

“The reason i maintain some optimism is that i think philosophically we're in pretty good shape... People...want to know the truth...”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

2019

People, Optimism, Thinking

“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

Lying, Time

“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)

Soul

“To think about reality we must use concepts, and certain truths about concepts may reveal, or reflect, truths about reality.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), pp. 223-224

Thinking, Reality

“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

Pain, Change

“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)

People

“Mystic Art affirms the holy mystery and the ideals of truth,
goodness and beauty. No other artistic ideal can fulfill the longing
soul like the creation and appreciation of relevant sacred art.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), Seven Statements on Mystic Art

Beauty, Art, Soul

“Our current artistic dilemma is to wake up
To the truth that we are the One Godself,
Creating the Universe — Every day.”

Alex Grey (1953) American artist

Art Psalms (2008), The One

Universe

“When the force of desire for the Truth blossoms, selfish desires wither away, just like darkness vanishes before the radiance of the light of dawn.”

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

P4
Atma Bodha (1987)

Light, Selfishness

“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

World, Self-confidence

“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)

Imagination

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

Horace book Epistles

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

“Diversity and integration are also needed in science and technology. Pride and prejudice are obstacles to scientific advancements and truth seeking.”

Newton Lee American computer scientist

The Transhumanism Handbook, 2019

Science

“Bias or prejudice born out of chauvinism and imaginary interests of national glorification is not only undesirable, it is indeed dangerous. It is harmful not only to the cause of historical truth...”

K. S. Lal (1920–2002) Indian historian

Meaning and Purpose of History in Volume I
Historical essays (2001)

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

Pope John Paul II Veritatis Splendor

Veritatis Splendor §1
Veritatis Splendor (1993)

Intelligence, Freedom

“...ingenuity was apparently given man in order that he may supply himself in crisis with shapes and sounds with which to guard himself from truth.”

William Faulkner book Light in August

Gail Hightower's thoughts in Chapter 20
Light in August (1932)

“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]

Love, Making love, Justice, Freedom

“Of all the various ways which the imagination has distorted truth, there is none which has worked so much harm as an exaggerated respect for past ages. This reverence for antiquity is repugnant to every maxim of reason, and is merely the indulgence of a poetic sentiment in favour of the remote and unknown.”

Henry Thomas Buckle (1821–1862) English historian

History of Civilisation in England. Vol 1, 1st pub 1857, also page 100. Worlds Classics , Pub. 1903. London Grant Richards.

Age, Way, Imagination, Past

“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

Men

“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

Wisdom, Strong, Heart

“There is no compulsion for man to accept the truth. But it is certainly a shame upon the human intellect when man is not even interested in finding out as to what is the truth! Islam teaches that Go.”

Maurice Bucaille (1920–1998) French physician and author

“The truth of a story is what the novelist strives for, and quite often the writer is taken down strange and unexpected paths on this search.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Rock that Is Higher (1993)

“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

Men, School, Way, Boy

“It is commonly said that it was the Mahomedans whom the British displaced as rulers in India. This is true only in a restricted sense. It would be nearer the truth to say that it was the Mahrattas in the main, whom we displaced.”

Sir Richard Temple, 1st Baronet (1826–1902) British politician

Sir Richard Temple quoted in Vikram Sampath - Savarkar, Echoes from a Forgotten Past, 1883–1924 (2019)

Sense

“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)

“The characteristics of Sadhuguna, Satwaguna, and peace and all such qualities, come from non-attachment. When Buddhi becomes steady, it is called Satwaguna. Sat (truth) is like letters engraved in stone. The talk of the worldly is like letters engraved on a chalk slab.”

Bhagawan Nityananda (1897–1961) Hindu guru and saint

253
The Chidakasha Gita (1927)

Peace

“Ask questions stubbornly, very proud men who seeing themselves right without knowing anything about the matter. This shows lack of piety, a tendency to ranting, a weak mind, and excessive vanity. [...] If you hear, or read writing (you object to), do not react with violence until you have proof that what is expressed is wrong. Do not accept that with the enthusiasm of the credulous man either until being wholly convinced of that. In both situations you blind yourself and drift away from truth… Act like a person who has no preconceived views, one ready to know and accept what is right and reject what is wrong.”

Ibn Hazm (994–1064) Arab theologian

ibid, 116

Men, Question, Reading, Personality

“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

“A non-mathematical presentation has necessary limitations; and the reader who wishes to learn how certain exact results follow from Einstein's, or even Newton's, law of gravitation is bound to seek the reasons in a mathematical treatise. ...[T]he geometry of relativity in its perfect harmony expresses a truth... which my bowdlerised version misses.
But the mind is not content to leave scientific Truth in a dry husk of mathematical symbols, and demands that it shall be alloyed with familiar images.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

Space, Time and Gravitation (1920)

Law, Mathematics, Learning, Perfection

“Observation and theory get on best when they are mixed together, both helping one another in the pursuit of truth. It is a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in a theory until it has been confirmed by observation. I hope I shall not shock the experimental physicists too much if I add that it is also a good rule not to put overmuch confidence in the observational results that are put forward until they have been confirmed by theory.”

Arthur Stanley Eddington (1882–1944) British astrophysicist

New Pathways in Science: Messenger Lectures 1934 (1947), p. 211.

Hope, Confidence, Help, Self-confidence

“Forgive me, masters of the mind!
At whose behest I long ago
So much unlearnt, so much resign'd —
I come not here to be your foe!
I seek these anchorites, not in ruth,
To curse and to deny your truth; Not as their friend, or child, I speak!
But as, on some far northern strand,
Thinking of his own Gods, a Greek
In pity and mournful awe might stand
Before some fallen Runic stone —
For both were faiths, and both are gone.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

God, Faith, Forgiveness, Thinking

“Appreciate the magnificent brain you possess. Protect and nurture it. Strive to be a good skeptic and critical thinker so that fewer hours of your precious life will be squandered on dead-end beliefs. Always try to think like a scientist so that you might better know truth from fiction.”

Guy P. Harrison (1963) American skeptic author

Life, Thinking, Dead

“If you try to simplify or pare off the superfluous from the minds and speech of most men, you will find that nothing is left. There is no simplicity in them, for there is no truth; truth and simplicity being, as Aquinas says, the same thing.”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Aurea Dicta VI, p. 4.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)

Men

“Toleration, as it is now widely preached, may be a very one-sided bargain. It will not do to let falsehood and moral idiocy say to truth and honesty, "I will tolerate you if you will tolerate me."”

Coventry Patmore (1823–1896) English poet

Magna Moralia XLII, p. 193.
The Rod, the Root, and the Flower (1895)

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

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

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

War, Happiness, People, World

“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)

Love, Making love, Music

“Colored people so seldom tell certain truths about conditions which confront their race that when they do, even white people who are interested in them feel that they must be “bitter.””

Mary Church Terrell (1863–1954) African Americans' rights activist

p.175

People, Color, Feeling

“According to tradition, the Blessed One preordained the Bodhisattva Maitreya as his successor. “And the Blessed One said to Ananda, ‘I am not the first Buddha who has come upon Earth, nor shall I be the last. In due time another Buddha will arise in the world, a Holy One, a supremely enlightened One, endowed with wisdom in conduct, embracing the Universe, an incomparable leader of men, a ruler of devas and mortals. He will reveal to you the same eternal truths, that I have taught you. He will establish his Law, glorious in its origin, glorious at the climax, and glorious at the goal, in the spirit and in the letter. He will proclaim a righteous life, wholly perfect and pure, such as I now proclaim. His disciples will number many thousands while mine number many hundreds.’ “Ananda said, ‘How shall we know him?’ “The Blessed One said, ‘He will be known as Maitreya!’ ”  (Paul Carus, The Gospel of Buddha) The future Buddha, Maitreya, as his name indicates, is the Buddha of compassion and love. This Bodhisattva, according to the power of his qualities, is often called Ajita—the Invincible.”

Helena Roerich (1879–1955) Russian philosopher

Source: Foundations of Buddhism (1930)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Men

“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)

Intelligence

“It is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now — there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken — but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods — the place newyork — not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others — the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man's face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.”

Stephen Vincent Benét book By the Waters of Babylon

Source: By the Waters of Babylon (1937)

Men, God, Books, Making love

“The task of unveiling the hidden truth demands some knowledge of Cosmogenesis, of the emanation of the Universe from the Absolute, the finite from the Infinite, and of the successive cycles, major and minor, of involution and evolution. In addition, both knowledge of the Symbolical Language, its purposes, methods and classical symbols, and the faculty of analysing and interpreting historical metaphors, are necessary to open the casket containing the treasures of concealed wisdom—the Holy Bible itself.”

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Source: The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible (1963)

Wisdom, Knowledge, Universe, Success

“The mission of the Jews and the purpose of the erudite and initiated authors of the Bible was, I submit, to preserve, to enunciate and to deliver to humanity this wisdom of the Chaldeo-Hebrew Sanctuaries. It is for this and not for lordship over the Earth, I suggest, that the Jews were a chosen people, a nation or “kingdom of priests” in very truth. May not their tribulations have partly arisen from their neglect of this mission, and may not their earthly wanderings and centuries of physical homelessness have followed upon and resulted from their departure from their true Sanctuary and the real purpose for which they were “chosen?””

Geoffrey Hodson (1886–1983) New Zealand occultist

Happily the light still shines, however deeply veiled, in and through this marvellous record of the Scriptures of the Hebrew Race.
Source: The Hidden Wisdom In The Holy Bible] (1963)

Wisdom, People, Departure

“The universe is always stranger than you think.
It didn’t matter how broad her imagination was, how cynical, how joyous and open, how well researched or wild minded. The universe was always stranger. Every dream, every imagining, however lavish and improbable, inevitably fell short of the truth.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: The Expanse, Tiamat's Wrath (2019), Chapter 50 (p. 522)

Dreams, Imagination, Thinking, Universe

“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

People, Making love, Feeling, Business

“[On postmodernism] We historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights – the intellectual equivalent of crack, in fact. Any acceptance of these theories – even the most gentle or modest bow in their direction – can prove fatal.”

Geoffrey Elton (1921–1994) historian

Source: Geoffrey Rudolph Elton, Return to Essentials (2002)

People, Way, Fight

“Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenue to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits. Surely the lesson of the last decade is that budget deficits are not caused by wild-eyed spenders but by slow economic growth and periodic recessions, and any new recession would break all deficit records. In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The experience of a number of European countries and Japan have borne this out. This country's own experience with tax reduction in 1954 has borne this out. And the reason is that only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Way, Country

“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.

History

“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.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

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

Life, War, Happiness, People

Quotes about the truth page 78

Quotes about the truth
page 78