quotations about truth
The most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
The Vital Illusion
The practice of utter sincerity towards other men would avail to no good end, if they were incapable of practising it towards their own minds. In fact, truth cannot be communicated until it is perceived.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Essay on Christianity"
All you can do, every day, is to learn the truth as best you can.
SUSANNE ALLEYN
Game of Patience
The human mind is a delusion generator, not a window to truth.
SCOTT ADAMS
God's Debris: A Thought Experiment
The sad truth is the truth is sad.
DANIEL HANDLER
as Lemony Snicket, The Hostile Hospital
Truth is poetry; it is the grandest poetry.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt that, if there were taken out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Truth was truth, whether I darkened my eyes to it or not.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Remarks on the Science of History
We have great power to see the truth when the truth is all we wish to see; but what is easier than to credit what we desire? and can a man deceive anyone so easily as himself?
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
Dark should torch of Truth be never,
For it burns with love divine.
Light it should all people, nations,
In our hearts should be its shrine.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Truth's Torch"
If you want to see the truth, you must be brave enough to look.
RUNE LAZULI
Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in its excess.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
SIR THOMAS BROWNE
Religio Medici
And how is one to know what is Truth? He thinks one thing before lunch; after a stirring bout with corned beef and onions the shining vision is strangely altered. Which is Truth?
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
"Truth", Mince Pie
Sometimes you hear a person speak the truth and you know that they are speaking the truth. But you also know that they have not heard themselves, do not know what they have said: do not know that they have revealed much more than they have said. This may be why the truth remains, on the whole, so rare.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise.
EMILY DICKINSON
Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
Each truth helps on the discovery of another.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
I always tell the truth when I'm drunk. In vino vomitas.
GUY BELLAMY
The Man Who Won
I don't deal in unvarnished truths. It's the varnish that counts. That makes it true.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Radiance