“A truth that no one knows is still the truth.”
Source: Jenna Starborn
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Sharon Shinn 14
American science fiction writer 1957Related quotes
“Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.”
The Deliverance from Error https://www.amazon.com/Al-Ghazalis-Path-Sufism-Deliverance-al-Munqidh/dp/1887752307
“The work of the world must still be done,
And minds are many though truth be one.”
The Echo.
“Even if moral truths cannot affect people, they can still be truths.”
Source: Derek Parfit, ‘Reasons and Motivation’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 71 (1997), p. 111
“To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.”
Quoted in The Viking Book of Aphorisms by Wystan Hugh Auden (1962) p. 323
“To know the Truth, to love the Truth, and to live the Truth is the whole duty of man.”
Sermon (1899)
“Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth.”
Source: Brave New World
King quoted here John F. Kennedy who at the signing of a charter establishing the German Peace Corps in Bonn, West Germany (24 June 1963) remarked: Dante once said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.
According to Bartleby.com, Kennedy's remark may have been inspired by the passage from Dante Alighieri’s La Comedia Divina “Inferno,” canto 3, lines 35–42 (1972) passage as translated by Geoffrey L. Bickersteth: "by those disbodied wretches who were loth when living, to be either blamed or praised. [...] Fear to lose beauty caused the heavens to expel these caitiffs; nor, lest to the damned they theng ave cause to boast, receives them the deep hell." A more modern-sounding translation from the foregoing Dante’s Inferno passage was translataed 1971 by Mark Musa thus: “They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels … undecided in neutrality. Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out, but even Hell itself would not receive them for fear the wicked there might glory over them.”
This is also often quoted slightly differently as: "The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict"
1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)
Context: I see this war as an unjust, evil, and futile war. I preach to you today on the war in Vietnam because my conscience leaves me with no other choice. The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. Freedom is still the bonus we receive for knowing the truth. "Ye shall know the truth," says Jesus, "and the truth shall set you free." Now, I've chosen to preach about the war in Vietnam because I agree with Dante, that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality. There comes a time when silence becomes betrayal.
Farrakhan speaks in Birmingham to support Voting Rights Act https://www.al.com/spotnews/2013/06/farrakhan_speaks_in_birmingham.html (14 June 2013)
“I believe that ignorance is the root of all evil.
And that no one knows the truth.”