Quotations about Truth

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson


Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. ~Aldous Huxley


Truth, like milk, arrives in the dark
But even so, wise dogs don't bark.
Only mongrels make it hard
For the milkman to come up the yard.
~Christopher Morley, Dogs Don't Bark at the Milkman


It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself. ~Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia


I never dreamed of being Shakespeare or Goethe, and I never expected to hold the great mirror of truth up before the world; I dreamed only of being a little pocket mirror, the sort that a woman can carry in her purse; one that reflects small blemishes, and some great beauties, when held close enough to the heart. ~Peter Altenberg


The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths. ~William James


Men ardently pursue truth, assuming it will be angels' bread when found. ~W. MacNeile Dixon


There is no god higher than truth. ~Mahatma Gandhi


Truth has very few friends and those few are suicides. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple. ~Rebecca West


It will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. ~Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy


Truth is rarely writ in ink; it lives in nature. ~Martin H. Fischer


When I tell any truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do. ~William Blake


Truth only reveals itself when one gives up all preconceived ideas. ~Shoseki


Without faith there is no truth, for that is all the truth is or ever was. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


There is no Truth. There is only the truth within each moment. ~Ramana Maharshi, attributed


Truth is after all a moving target
Hairs to split,
And pieces that don't fit
How can anybody be enlightened?
Truth is after all so poorly lit.
~Neil Peart, Turn the Page
(Thank you, Ryan)


Theories are private property, but truth is common stock. ~Charles Caleb Colton


It is a terrible thing for a man to find out suddenly that all his life he has been speaking nothing but the truth. ~Oscar Wilde


My truths do not last long in me. Not as long as those that are not mine. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Truth breeds hatred. ~Bias of Priene, Maxims


If you cannot find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it? ~Dogen


One of life's regrets is that you didn't always tell the truth, and now it's too late, because the truth has changed. ~Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com


People always think something's all true. ~J.D. Salinger, Catcher in the Rye


A thing may happen and be a total lie; another thing may not happen and be truer than the truth. ~Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried


Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch, nay, you may kick it all about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Professor at the Breakfast Table


Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. ~Leo Tolstoy


Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes


I am the fellow citizen of every being that thinks; my country is Truth. ~Alphonse de Lamartine, "Marseillaise of Peace," 1841


Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth. ~Jean-Paul Sartre


Truth is a great flirt. ~Franz Liszt


I am of the Buddhists. The great Teacher comes periodically. He is followed by pupils who corrupt the texts and then a new Buddha must be born to reëstablish the truth. ~Martin H. Fischer


We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter. ~Denis Diderot


All great truths begin as blasphemies. ~George Bernard Shaw, Annajanska, 1919


...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 Beginning & the End


The greatest truths are the simplest: so likewise are the greatest men. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827


I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. ~Simone de Beauvoir


Man has always sacrificed truth to his vanity, comfort and advantage. He lives... by make-believe. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938


When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it. ~French Proverb


Truth is no Doctoresse, she takes no degrees at Paris or Oxford... but oftentimes to such an one as myself, an Idiota or common person, no great things, melancholizing in woods where waters are, quiet places by rivers, fountains, whereas the silly man expecting no such matter, thinketh only how best to delectate and refresh his mynde continually with Natura her pleasaunt scenes, woods, water-falls, or Art her statelie gardens, parks, terraces, Belvideres, on a sudden the goddesse herself Truth has appeared, with a shyning lyghte, and a sparklyng countenance, so as yee may not be able lightly to resist her. ~Charles Lamb


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


The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. ~Attributed to James A. Garfield


Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident. ~Arthur Schopenhauer


There is no truth. There is only perception. ~Gustave Flaubert


If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on. ~Stopford Brooke