“To know the Truth, to love the Truth, and to live the Truth is the whole duty of man.”

Sermon (1899)

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Benjamin Fish Austin 24
Nineteenth-century Canadian educator/Methodist Minister/Spi… 1850–1933

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“Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. IV, p. 172
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: Questioner: Can one love truth without loving man? Can one love man without loving truth? What comes first?
Krishnamurti: Love comes first. To love truth, you must know truth. To know truth is to deny truth. What is known is not truth. What is known is already encased in time and ceases to be truth. Truth is an eternal movement, and so cannot be measured in words or in time. It cannot be held in the fist. You cannot love something which you do not know. But truth is not to be found in books, in images, in temples. It is to be found in action, in living. The very search for the unknown is love itself, and you cannot search for the unknowable away from relationship. You cannot search for reality, or for what you will, in isolation. It comes into being only in relationship, only when there is right relationship between man and man. So the love of man is the search for reality.

Marcus Tullius Cicero photo

“The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

As quoted in A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (2007) by John Clippinger, p. 130
Compare: "The distinguishing property of man is to search for and to follow after truth." – De Officiis, Book I, 13
Disputed

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“There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.”

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher

Prologue.
Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954)

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“No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition.”

William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…

"The Student Life" in The Medical News (30 September 1905).

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“An aphorism can never be the whole truth; it is either a half-truth or a truth-and-a-half.”

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Die Fackel no. 270/71 (19 January 1909)
Die Fackel

Ramana Maharshi photo

“Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.”

Ramana Maharshi (1879–1950) Indian religious leader

Interview (c. 1945) in The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi (1972), p. 75

Alan M. Dershowitz photo
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“Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.”

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (1058–1111) Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic

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Franklin D. Roosevelt photo

“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

Part of this is often misquoted as "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," most notably by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his I've Been To The Mountaintop http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkivebeentothemountaintop.htm speech. Similar expressions were used in ancient times, for example by Seneca the Younger (Ep. Mor. 3.24.12 http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep3.shtml): scies nihil esse in istis terribile nisi ipsum timorem ("You will understand that there is nothing dreadful in this except fear itself"), and by Michel de Montaigne: "The thing I fear most is fear", in Essays (1580), Book I, Ch. 17.
1930s, First Inaugural Address (1933)
Context: This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.

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