Truth Quotes

Most popular truth quotes

The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path. - Pope Francis quote.
The question of truth is really a question of memory, deep memory, for it deals with something prior to ourselves and can succeed in uniting us in a way that transcends our petty and limited individual consciousness. It is a question about the origin of all that is, in whose light we can glimpse the goal and thus the meaning of our common path.

brotherhood of man

It is the easiest thing in the world to deny a fact. People do it all the time. Yet it remains a fact just the same. - Isaac Asimov quote.
It is the easiest thing in the world to deny a fact. People do it all the time. Yet it remains a fact just the same.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry. - Thomas Paine quote.
It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

error mistakes

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. - Thomas Huxley quote.
It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

superstitions

Nobody has a right to put another under such difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth, or hurt himself by telling what is not true. - Samuel Johnson quote.
Nobody has a right to put another under such difficulty that he must either hurt the person by telling the truth, or hurt himself by telling what is not true.
I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination. - Ursula Le Guin quote.
I'll make my report as if I told a story, for I was taught as a child on my homeworld that Truth is a matter of the imagination.
For as bats' eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all. - Aristotle quote.
For as bats' eyes are to daylight so is our intellectual eye to those truths which are, in their own nature, the most obvious of all.
My way of joking is telling the truth; that is the funniest joke in the world. - George Bernard Shaw quote.
My way of joking is telling the truth; that is the funniest joke in the world.
Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of time. - Baltasar Gracian quote.
Truth always lags last, limping along on the arm of time.
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers. - William Penn quote.
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.
Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either. - Aesop quote.
Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle quote.
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

famous

Speak the truth, but leave immediately after.

honesty funny proverbs

All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw quote.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. - Mark Twain quote.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Mark Twain Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. - André Gide quote.
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.

doubt

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.
It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak and another to hear.
Do not expect truth to prevail in all situations. - Gautama Buddha quote.
Do not expect truth to prevail in all situations.
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect. - Herbert Spencer quote.
Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse. - Alexander Pope quote.
Truth shines the brighter clad in verse.
Love truth, but pardon error. - Voltaire quote.
Love truth, but pardon error.
Voltaire Sept Discours en vers sur l’homme

error mistakes

Justice is truth in action. - Benjamin Disraeli quote.
Justice is truth in action.

justice

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact.
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth. - Albert Einstein quote.
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been kindness, beauty and truth.

kindness personal beauty

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

beliefs

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously. - Thomas Sowell quote.
There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. - Mark Twain quote.
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

funny

Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. - Mark Twain quote.
Truth is stranger than fiction — to some people, but I am measurably familiar with it. Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. - Mark Twain quote.
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to the light. - Maya Angelou quote.
Let me tell so much truth. I want to tell the truth in my work. The truth will lead me to the light.
We owe the truth, not just the facts. The facts can sometimes obscure the truth. I've seen many things. I've learned many things. I've certainly been exposed to many things and I've learned something: I owe it to you to tell you. - Maya Angelou quote.
We owe the truth, not just the facts. The facts can sometimes obscure the truth. I've seen many things. I've learned many things. I've certainly been exposed to many things and I've learned something: I owe it to you to tell you.
My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.
Don King John Bull’s Other Island

joking

Where there is truth, there is also light, but don't confuse light with the flash. - Pope Francis quote.
Where there is truth, there is also light, but don't confuse light with the flash.
When one is really searching for the truth, one is doing it for good. You don't look for the truth to divide, confront, attack, belittle, or dissolve. - Pope Francis quote.
When one is really searching for the truth, one is doing it for good. You don't look for the truth to divide, confront, attack, belittle, or dissolve.
In a society where lies, cover-ups, and hypocrisy have caused people to lose basic trust in the social contract, what could be more revolutionary than the truth? - Pope Francis quote.
In a society where lies, cover-ups, and hypocrisy have caused people to lose basic trust in the social contract, what could be more revolutionary than the truth?
Pope Francis Annual Message to Educational Communities, Easter 2002
Only with "the truth will set you free" is it possible to resolve the grave problems of people and nations. - Pope Francis quote.
Only with "the truth will set you free" is it possible to resolve the grave problems of people and nations.
The truth is always combative, but it is also combated. - Pope Francis quote.
The truth is always combative, but it is also combated.
Truth, goodness, and beauty are inseparable. - Pope Francis quote.
Truth, goodness, and beauty are inseparable.
It's very hard, in the world of the easy, to believe in the truth. - Pope Francis quote.
It's very hard, in the world of the easy, to believe in the truth.
An enemy who tells the truth contributes infinitely more to our improvement than a friend who deludes us.

proverbs friendship

He who is caught in a lie is not believed when he tells the truth.

proverbs Spanish proverbs

Never assume the obvious is true. - William Safire quote.
Never assume the obvious is true.
I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth. - Elie Wiesel quote.
I have one request: may I never use my reason against truth.
Elie Wiesel quoting from a Hasidic rabbi’s prayer

reason

Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is. - Nadine Gordimer quote.
Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

beauty

The truth is not always dressed for the evening.
Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now—always.
Only the truth can still astonish people.
Some people so treasure the truth that they use it with great economy.
A half truth is a whole lie.
— Jewish proverb

proverbs Jewish proverbs

A half-truth is usually less than half of that. - Bernard Williams quote.
A half-truth is usually less than half of that.
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. - William Blake quote.
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

honesty morals

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. - G. C. Lichtenberg quote.
The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
Add one small bit to the truth and you inevitably subtract from it.
— Dell Crossword Puzzles
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood. - William James quote.
We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

flexible thinking

Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch. Nay, you may kick it about all day, and it will be round and full at evening. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. quote.
Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch. Nay, you may kick it about all day, and it will be round and full at evening.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. - Robert Frost quote.
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

change

Truth hurts—not the searching after; the running from!

funny

Of course, it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story. - Margaret Thatcher quote.
Of course, it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.
The color of truth is gray. - André Gide quote.
The color of truth is gray.

morals

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.

lies

Every time you try to smother a truth, two others get their breath.
I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. - Isaac Newton quote.
I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me.
A paradox is a truth standing on its head to gain attention. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
A paradox is a truth standing on its head to gain attention.

paradox

Nothing lays itself open to the charge of exaggeration more than the language of naked truth. - Joseph Conard quote.
Nothing lays itself open to the charge of exaggeration more than the language of naked truth.

exaggeration

It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
It takes two to speak truth—one to speak and another to hear.

honesty

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable. - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote.
We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.

human nature

The love of truth lies at the root of much humor. - Robertson Davies quote.
The love of truth lies at the root of much humor.

humor

Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end. - Sid Caesar quote.
Comedy has to be based on truth. You take the truth and you put a little curlicue at the end.

humor

Truth exists; only lies have to be invented. - Georges Braque quote.
Truth exists; only lies have to be invented.
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.
There is no god higher than truth. - Mahatma Gandhi quote.
There is no god higher than truth.
A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. - David Foster Wallace quote.
A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded.
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
Briefly, you can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

logic

It is the customary fate of new truths, to begin as heresies, and to end as superstitions.

progress

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true. Cling to it long enough, and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. - Robert Frost quote.
Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true. Cling to it long enough, and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.

beliefs

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. - Aldous Huxley quote.
You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, Go away, I'm looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling. - Robert M. Pirsig quote.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, Go away, I'm looking for the truth, and so it goes away. Puzzling.
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes. - Maimonides quote.
You must accept the truth from whatever source it comes.
I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty. - John Keats quote.
I never can feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of its beauty.
Facts do not exist; only interpretations. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
Facts do not exist; only interpretations.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant. - Emily Dickinson quote.
Tell all the truth but tell it slant.

writing advice

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. - Flannery O'Connor quote.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.
Truth is a pathless land. - Jiddu Krishnamurti quote.
Truth is a pathless land.
Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may consist a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened. - Wilhelm Stekel quote.
Truth is not always the best basis for happiness. There are certain lies which may consist a far better and more secure foundation of happiness. There are people who perish when their eyes are opened.

happiness

Truth came to market and could not be sold; we buy lies with ready cash.
— African proverb

African proverbs lies proverbs

Bitter truth is better than sweet falsehood.
— African proverb

proverbs lies African proverbs

I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell. - Harry S. Truman quote.
I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it's hell.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened. - Winston Churchill quote.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Truth burns up error. - Sojourner Truth quote.
Truth burns up error.

mistakes

Error moves with quick feet and truth must never be lagging behind. - Alexander Crummell quote.
Error moves with quick feet and truth must never be lagging behind.
The race problem is a moral one. . . . lts solution will come especially from the domain of principles. Like all the other great battles of humanity, it is to be fought out with the weapons of truth. - Alexander Crummell quote.
The race problem is a moral one. . . . lts solution will come especially from the domain of principles. Like all the other great battles of humanity, it is to be fought out with the weapons of truth.
Absolute truth is incompatible with an advanced state of society. - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis quote.
Absolute truth is incompatible with an advanced state of society.
The truth should be told, though it kill.
You never find yourself until you face the truth. - Pearl Bailey quote.
You never find yourself until you face the truth.

advisory

Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that need and those that need not to be told. - Margaret Thatcher quote.
Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that need and those that need not to be told.
If one cannot invent a really convincing lie. it is often better to stick to the truth.
Truth, like surgery, may hurt, but it cures.
Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek. - George Sand quote.
Art for the sake of art itself is an idle sentence. Art for the sake of truth, for the sake of what is beautiful and good — that is the creed I seek.
The truth shall make you free.
— John 8:32

biblical

It has always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom if ever necessary. - Arthur Balfour quote.
It has always been desirable to tell the truth, but seldom if ever necessary.

socialism

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. - Mark Twain quote.
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

lying

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use. - Mark Twain quote.
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use.
It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth. - John Locke quote.
It is one thing to show a man that he is in an error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

mistakes

In the end truth will out. - William Shakespeare quote.
In the end truth will out.
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 quote.
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.
The obstinate insisting that tweedledum is not tweedledee is the bone and marrow of life. - William James quote.
The obstinate insisting that tweedledum is not tweedledee is the bone and marrow of life.
The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow. - John Ciardi quote.
The reader deserves an honest opinion. If he doesn't deserve it, give it to him anyhow.
There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine. - Napoleon quote.
There is nothing more fickle, more vague, or more powerful; yet capricious as it is, it is nevertheless much more often true, reasonable, and just, than we imagine.
One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
One often contradicts an opinion when it is really only the tone in which it has been presented that is unsympathetic.
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth. - John Stuart Mill quote.
Popular opinions, on subjects not palpable to sense, are often true, but seldom or never the whole truth.
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts: the less you know the hotter you get. - Bertrand Russell quote.
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts: the less you know the hotter you get.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. - Bertrand Russell quote.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, provided it agrees with ours. - Josh Billings quote.
Every man has a perfect right to his opinion, provided it agrees with ours.
We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth. - Buckminster Fuller quote.
We should stop kidding ourselves. We should let go of things that aren't true. It's always better with the truth.
He who tells the truth is not we liked.
— African proverb

African proverbs proverbs

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. - John F. Kennedy quote.
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

tradition

Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth. - Anna Jameson quote.
Accuracy of language is one of the bulwarks of truth.

accuracy language

The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth. - Alfred Adler quote.
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
All perception of truth is the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands to our head.

analogy perception

There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is art. - Raymond Chandler quote.
There are two kinds of truth: the truth that lights the way and the truth that warms the heart.  The first of these is science, and the second is art.

science art

A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth. - Albert Einstein quote.
A foolish faith in authority is the worst enemy of truth.

faith authority

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty"—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

beauty

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men. - Matthew Arnold quote.
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

death

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. - Virginia Woolf quote.
It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

dreams (during sleep)

Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm. - John Dryden quote.
Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm.

enthusiasm

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains. - Henri-Frédéric Amiel quote.
An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains.

error mistakes

Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion. - Francis Bacon quote.
Truth emerges more readily from error than confusion.

mistakes error

It seems, indeed, a necessary weakness of our mind to be able to reach truth only across a multitude of errors and obstacles. - Claude Bernard quote.
It seems, indeed, a necessary weakness of our mind to be able to reach truth only across a multitude of errors and obstacles.
Claude Bernard An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

error mistakes mind

There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth. - Samuel Butler quote.
There is no such source of error as the pursuit of absolute truth.

error mistakes

Error proliferates. Man tracks it down and cuts it up into little pieces hoping to turn it into grains of truth.

error mistakes

To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful. - Victor Hugo quote.
To rise from error to truth is rare and beautiful.

mistakes error

The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth. - Walter Lippmann quote.
The study of error is not only in the highest degree prophylactic, but it serves as a stimulating introduction to the study of truth.

mistakes error

If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.

error mistakes

It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive.  Why should it exaggerate? - Victor Hugo quote.
It is the essence of truth that it is never excessive.  Why should it exaggerate?

exaggeration

In the spider-web of facts, many a truth is strangled.

facts

Those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament. - Evelyn Waugh quote.
Those who are in the know can usually discern an embryo truth, a little grit of fact, like the core of a pearl round which have been deposited the delicate layers of ornament.

facts

Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock. - Shana Alexander quote.
Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.

half-truth

Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better. - Sydney Harris quote.
Sincerity that thinks it is the sole possessor of the truth is a deadlier sin than hypocrisy, which knows better.

sincerity hypocrisy

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it.  Truth happens to an idea.  It becomes true, is made true by events. - William James quote.
The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it.  Truth happens to an idea.  It becomes true, is made true by events.
William James Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking

ideas

There are few human beings who receive the truth complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellular, like a laborious mosaic. - Anaïs Nin quote.
There are few human beings who receive the truth complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellular, like a laborious mosaic.
To search for truth, one has to be drunk with imagination. - Leonard Bernstein quote.
To search for truth, one has to be drunk with imagination.

imagination

If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success. - Confucius quote.
If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.

language

I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies. - Pietro Aretino quote.
I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.

lies love

Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. - Rev. J. M. Gibbon quote.
Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited.

lies

The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it. - H. G. Wells quote.
The forceps of our minds are clumsy forceps, and crush the truth a little in taking hold of it.

mind

A snare for the truth of human experience. - Tennessee Williams quote.
A snare for the truth of human experience.

theater

Poetry is truth in its Sunday clothes.

poetry

If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics. - Will Rogers quote.
If you ever injected truth into politics you'd have no politics.

politics

Truth walks toward us on the path of our questions.

asking questions

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions—especially selfish ones.

mistakes selfishness

When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey.
— Arabian proverb

tact proverbs Arabian proverbs

He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth. - Jose Ortega y Gasset quote.
He who wishes to teach us a truth should not tell it to us, but simply suggest it with a brief gesture, a gesture which starts an ideal trajectory in the air along which we glide until we find ourselves at the feet of the new truth.

teaching

Every truth has two sides; it is well to look at both before we commit ourselves to either.
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression.  It is possible to lie, and even to murder, for the truth.
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.
Truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen. - Maxwell Anderson quote.
Truth's like a fire, and will burn through and be seen.
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head. - Hannah Arendt quote.
When an old truth ceases to be applicable, it does not become any truer by being stood on its head.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth...and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below. - Francis Bacon quote.
It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore and to see ships tossed upon the sea: a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth...and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests, in the vale below.
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth."  But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking. - Saul Bellow quote.
A man may say, "From now on I'm going to speak the truth."  But the truth hears him and runs away and hides before he's even done speaking.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. - Jesus Christ quote.
Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

biblical

As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand. - Josh Billings quote.
As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.
Many people choose, early on, their own truths from the large smorgasbord available.
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender. - Sir Thomas Browne quote.
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
Nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth! - Edward Bulwer-Lytton quote.
Nothing is so agonizing to the fine skin of vanity as the application of a rough truth!

vanity

Men take so much delight in lying, that truth is sometimes forced to disguise herself in the habit of falsehood to get entertainment, as in fables...by the ancients. - Samuel Butler quote.
Men take so much delight in lying, that truth is sometimes forced to disguise herself in the habit of falsehood to get entertainment, as in fables...by the ancients.
Samuel Butler The Genuine Remains in Verse and Prose of Mr. Samuel Butler, Vol. Two
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water. - Cervantes quote.
Truth may be stretched, but cannot be broken, and always gets above falsehood, as oil does above water.
To the scientific mind, truth comes first.  Truth, however bitter, can be accepted, and woven into a design for living. - Agatha Christie quote.
To the scientific mind, truth comes first.  Truth, however bitter, can be accepted, and woven into a design for living.
In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. - Winston Churchill quote.
In wartime, Truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.
Winston Churchill Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations

war

Truth is irresistible.  The vivacity of its coloring has quite a different effect from the daub of falsity or invention.
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it. - Confucius quote.
They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.
Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite.  Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river. - Cyril Connolly quote.
Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite.  Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river.
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves. - C. C. Colton quote.
Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation, because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.
Tell all the Truth, but tell it slant.
The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked. - Umberto Eco quote.
The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods. - Albert Einstein quote.
Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.
Albert Einstein Essays Presented to Leo Baeck on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday
Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs. - Albert Einstein quote.
Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
Albert Einstein Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives
Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through. - George Eliot quote.
Truth has rough flavors if we bite it through.
Wherever the truth is injured, defend it. - Ralph Waldo Emerson quote.
Wherever the truth is injured, defend it.
Truth is a flower in whose neighborhood others must wither. - Edward Forster quote.
Truth is a flower in whose neighborhood others must wither.
Say not, "I have found the truth," but rather, "I have found a truth."
The color of truth is grey. - André Gide quote.
The color of truth is grey.
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will —
For he who'd make his fellow-creatures wise 
Should always gild the philosophic pill!
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is. - Nadine Gordimer quote.
The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth. - Eric Hoffer quote.
Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.
Truth is tough.  It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.
The man who finds a truth lights a torch. - Robert Ingersoll quote.
The man who finds a truth lights a torch.
Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while cleaning them. - Karl Kraus quote.
Truth is a clumsy servant that breaks the dishes while cleaning them.
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. - W. S. Landor quote.
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.
The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found. - G. E. Lessing quote.
The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but rather the pursuit of Truth by which he extends his powers and in which his ever-growing perfectibility is to be found.
Who dares
 To say that he alone has found the truth? - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow quote.
Who dares
 To say that he alone has found the truth?
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart. - James Russell Lowell quote.
Who speaks the truth stabs Falsehood to the heart.
Truth, like gold, is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine. - John Locke quote.
Truth, like gold, is not less so for being newly brought out of the mine.
John Locke An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have ragged edges. - Herman Melville quote.
Truth uncompromisingly told will always have ragged edges.
Truth has nutritional value.
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.
Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter, terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms. - Ouida quote.
Truth is a rough, honest, helter-skelter, terrier, that none like to see brought into their drawing rooms.
Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. - Thomas Paine quote.
Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.
The truth knocks on the door and you say, "Go away, I'm looking for the truth," and so it goes away.  Puzzling.
The truth never arrives neatly wrapped.
He who would speak the truth must first have one foot in the stirrup.
— Turkish proverb

Turkish proverbs proverbs

Truth never is undone;
Its shafts remain. - Theodore Roethke quote.
Truth never is undone;
Its shafts remain.
Discussion is impossible with someone who claims not to speak the truth, but already to possess it.
The truth may be puzzling.  It may take some work to grapple with.  It may be counterintuitive.  It may contradict deeply held prejudices.  It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true.  But our preferences do not determine what's true. - Carl Sagan quote.
The truth may be puzzling.  It may take some work to grapple with.  It may be counterintuitive.  It may contradict deeply held prejudices.  It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true.  But our preferences do not determine what's true.
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart. - Hector Hugh Munro quote.
We all know that Prime Ministers are wedded to the truth, but like other married couples they sometimes live apart.
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it. - George Santayana quote.
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
Perhaps
The truth depends on a walk around a lake.

walking

Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed. - Rabindranath Tagore quote.
Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction. - Mark Twain quote.
Truth is more of a stranger than fiction.
The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us. - Peter Ustinov quote.
The truth is really an ambition which is beyond us.
The best mind-altering drug is truth. - Jane Wagner quote.
The best mind-altering drug is truth.
Sometimes in writing of myself—which is the only subject anyone knows intimately—I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure, an antic sound. - E. B. White quote.
Sometimes in writing of myself—which is the only subject anyone knows intimately—I have occasionally had the exquisite thrill of putting my finger on a little capsule of truth, and heard it give the faint squeak of mortality under my pressure, an antic sound.
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 quote.
There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths.  It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. - Virginia Woolf quote.
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way. - Emile Zola quote.
If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.
Many a truth is the result of an error. - Marie von Eschenbach quote.
Many a truth is the result of an error.

mistakes

Error is to truth as sleep is to waking.  I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote.
Error is to truth as sleep is to waking.  I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.

mistakes

History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. - Thomas Huxley quote.
History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

mistakes

You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it. - G. K. Chesterton quote.
You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.

reason

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident. - Arthur Schopenhauer quote.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. - Niels Bohr quote.
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. - Gautama Buddha quote.
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quote.
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

genius

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing. - Henry David Thoreau quote.
Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

justice

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters. - Friedrich Nietzsche quote.
It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

knowledge

False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness. - Charles Darwin quote.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness.

science

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a labourer's hand. - Kahlil Gibran quote.
Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a labourer's hand.

beauty love work

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence. - Rabindranath Tagore quote.
The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.
Truth is not determined by majority vote.

politics democracy

Most men would kill the truth if truth would kill their religion.

religion

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth.

science

Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof. - Martin H. Fischer quote.
Don't despise empiric truth. Lots of things work in practice for which the laboratory has never found proof.
It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.
Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. - Yuval Noah Harari quote.
Truth and power can travel together only so far. Sooner or later they go their separate ways. If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power.

reality power

As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it – and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it. - Yuval Noah Harari quote.
As a species, humans prefer power to truth. We spend far more time and effort on trying to control the world than on trying to understand it – and even when we try to understand it, we usually do so in the hope that understanding the world will make it easier to control it.

power reality

Your duty is to scream those truths that one should shout but that are merely whispered. - Nassim Nicholas Taleb quote.
Your duty is to scream those truths that one should shout but that are merely whispered.

duty

Life offers everyone truth and comfort. Choose carefully. You rarely can have both.

life