“The truth is the light and light is the truth.”

— Ralph Ellison , book Invisible Man

Prologue.
Invisible Man (1952)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The truth is the light and light is the truth." by Ralph Ellison?

Ralph Ellison photo

Ralph Ellison 82

American novelist, literary critic, scholar and writer 1914–1994

Related quotes

“Not every light is a true light;
To the wise the light of truth is light itself.”

Thiruvalluvar book Tirukkuṛaḷ

Verse XXX.9
Tirukkural

“So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.”
Ita res accendent lumina rebus.

Lucretius (-94–-55 BC) Roman poet and philosopher

Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things)

“There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Great Thought" (19 February 1938), published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler (1976)
Context: There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart. The first of these is science, and the second is art. Neither is independent of the other or more important than the other. Without art, science would be as useless as a pair of high forceps in the hands of a plumber. Without science, art would become a crude mess of folklore and emotional quackery. The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

“The truth sometimes not sought for comes forth to the light.”

Menander (-342–-291 BC) Athenian playwright of New Comedy

The Girl Who Gets Flogged, fragment 422.

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.”

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862–1931) African-American journalist, newspaper editor, suffragist, sociologist, early leader in the civil rights mo…

“Truth is the light
So you never give up the fight.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Final jamming of Live at the Roxy (recorded 1976)
Song lyrics

“We do not know the truth. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the shadow of the truth. And where there is a shadow, somewhere there must be light.”

Eric Mervyn Lindsay (1907–1974) Irish astronomer

Quoted in [The Irish Astronomical Journal, Volume 12, Irish Astronomical Society, 1975, 150]

“My wish for you… is that your skeptic-eclectic brain be flooded with the light of truth.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book The First Circle

Source: The First Circle

“Time's glory is to calm contending kings,
To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light.”

William Shakespeare book The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece.

“Only in truth does charity shine forth, only in truth can charity be authentically lived. Truth is the light that gives meaning and value to charity. That light is both the light of reason and the light of faith, through which the intellect attains to the natural and supernatural truth of charity: it grasps its meaning as gift, acceptance, and communion. Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way. In a culture without truth, this is the fatal risk facing love. It falls prey to contingent subjective emotions and opinions, the word “love” is abused and distorted, to the point where it comes to mean the opposite. Truth frees charity from the constraints of an emotionalism that deprives it of relational and social content, and of a fideism that deprives it of human and universal breathing-space.”

Pope Benedict XVI (1927) 265th Pope of the Catholic Church

2009, Cartias in Vertitate (29 June 2009)

Related topics