quotations about truth
The truth ... is a beautiful and terrible thing and should therefore be treated with great caution.
J. K. ROWLING
The Sorcerer's Stone
The only way to the truth is through blasphemy.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
There are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth.
FLANNERY O'CONNOR
Wise Blood
The truth is always the same ... and the wants of the human heart are not widely different.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Laicus: Or, The Experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish
He who shuts out truth, by the same act opens the door to all the error that supplies its place.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
Truth is a moral requirement for society, and offenses against honesty, by word or action, are violations against character, ethics, and moral decency.
VINCENT J. BOVE
"Trojan Horse in the Heart of America", The Epoch Times, May 10, 2017
Personally, I don't give a rap for documents; for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
It Is So! (If You Think So)
Truth ... is the sovereign good of human nature.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
EUGENE O'NEILL
The Iceman Cometh
Truth is not what makes people feel good. Unfortunately, bad news can be true.
CHAMBERLAIN C. OGUNEDO
"And the truth shall set you free: What is truth?", The Guardian, November 27, 2016
One voice speaking truth is a greater force than fleets and armies.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
MAHATMA GANDHI
Non-Violence in Peace and War
Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!
URSULA K. LE GUIN
introduction, The Left Hand of Darkness
All things to all men only fools will tell,
Truth profits none but those that use it well.
JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The Wise Men of Greece: In a Series of Dramatic Dialogues
When social forces press for the rejection of age-old Truth, then those who reject it will seek meaning in their own truth. These truths will rarely be Truth at all; they will be only collections of personal preferences and prejudices.
DEAN KOONTZ
Forever Odd
Science and mathematics
Run parallel to reality, they symbolize it, they squint at it,
They never touch it: consider what an explosion
Would rock the bones of men into little white fragments and unsky the world
If any mind for a moment touch truth.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"The Silent Shepherds"
The true is Godlike: we do not see it itself; we must guess at it through its manifestations.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.
OSCAR WILDE
The Nightingale and the Rose