Trial records (1431) <br class="br">Context: The light comes at the same time as the Voice. … I will not tell you all; I have not leave; my oath does not touch on that. My Voice is good and to be honored. I am not bound to answer you about it. I request that the points on which I do not now answer may be given me in writing. … You shall not know yet. There is a saying among children, that 'Sometimes one is hanged for speaking the truth.'" [She is asked : Do you know if you are in the grace of God? ] If I am not, may God place me there; if I am, may God so keep me. I should be the saddest in all the world if I knew that I were not in the grace of God. But if I were in a state of sin, do you think the Voice would come to me? I would that every one could hear the Voice as I hear it.<br><br> Third public examination (24 February 1431) http://www.stjoan-center.com/Trials/sec03.html; part of this testimony has sometimes been paraphrased: If I am not in the state of grace, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.
“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.
“Heaven sometimes speaks through the mouths of lunatics, drunkards and children.”
Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher
1042
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)
“Sometimes the most ruthless heart speaks the most truth”
Cassandra Clare book Lord of Shadows
Source: Lord of Shadows
“Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.”
Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer
Source: Fallen Leaves (2014), Ch. 1 : Our life begins
“They say the only people who tell the truth are drunkards and children. Guess which one I am.”
Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor
“What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?”
Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.
Book I, satire i, line 24
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)
David L. Norton (1930–1995) American philosopher
Source: Personal Destinies: A Philosophy of Ethical Individualism (1976), p. 8
“It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/7cncd10.txt (1849), Wednesday
