“We know how to speak many falsehoods which resemble real things, but we know, when we will, how to speak true things.”

— Hesiod

We know to tell many fictions like to truths, and we know, when we will, to speak what is true.
We know how to tell many lies that pass for truth, and we know, when we wish, to tell the truth itself.
Source: The Theogony (c. 700 BC), lines 27–28. Variant translations:

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Hesiod 61

Greek poet

Stanley Lombardo (1943) Philosopher, Classicist

Theogony, lines 28–29
Translations, Works and Days and Theogony (1993)

“We teach them to speak and also to listen. Because when people only talk and don't listen, they end up thinking that what they say is the only thing that is worth anything. … Speaking and listening to words is how we know who we are, where we come from, and where our steps are going. Also it's how we know about others, their steps, and their world. Speaking and listening to words is like listening to life.”

Subcomandante Marcos (1957) Mexican activist

"I shit on all the revolutionary vanguards of this planet" http://www.csuchico.edu/zapatist/HTML/Archive/Communiques/etaJAN.html January, 2003

“God's mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.”

Aeschylus Prometheus Bound

Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 1032–1033

“Some speak of things we know, as new;
And you, of things unknown as things forgot.”

Marianne Moore (1887–1972) American poet and writer

"Quoting an Also Private Thought" (this poem is a very slight reworking of an earlier poem "As Has Been Said")
The Poems of Marianne Moore (2003)

“We believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things — metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense (1873)

“The true test of intelligence is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do”

John Holt book How Children Fail

How Children Fail (1964).

“Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them…the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion
Context: Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them... the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.