Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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Truth
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“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”
Denis Diderot (1713–1784) said by 1784 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now, today is the day we honor, of course, the Presidents, ranging from George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie, to George Bush, who couldn't tell the truth, to Bill Clinton, who couldn't tell the difference.”
Jay Leno (born 1950) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Monologue, 19 February 2007 (U.S. Presidents Day)
“They say that the truth will set you free But then again, so will a lie... It depends if you're trying to get to the promised land Or if you're just trying to get by.”
Ani DiFranco (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I smile when I'm angry, I cheat and I lie. I do what I have to do to get by. But I know what is wrong and I know what is right, and I'd die for the truth in my secret life.”
Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Christ is the genius of love and as such the most diametric antipole to Jewry, which is the incarnation of hate. … Christ was the first anti-Jewish opponent of stature. … The Jew is the lie that became flesh. He nailed Christ to the cross, and thus for the first time in history nailed the eternal truth to the cross.”
Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) said by 1945 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.”
Albert Finney (1936–2019) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reply when asked if he thought he was a lot like the character he plays in Big Fish in an interview with Paul Fischer at Dark Horizons (2 December 2003).
“When words stop meaning anything, when truth doesn’t matter, when people can just lie with abandon, democracy can’t work.”
Barack Obama (born 1961) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at political rally on November 2, 2018. Source: Obama rips hecklers: Why are the people who won the last election ‘so mad all the time?'
“I'm just a dark guy from a den of iniquity. A dark shadowy figure from the bowels of iniquity. I wish I could be Mike who gets an endorsement deal. But you can't make a lie and a truth go together. This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime.”
Mike Tyson (born 1966) first seen 2002 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Telegraph (2002).
“Universal truth is not measured in mass appeal, this is the last time I kneel and pray to the sky, cause almost everything I was ever told was a lie”
Immortal Technique (born 1978) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Peace and Violence" (1973)
“I went in thinking: "I'm not going to find out that Darwinism is a fraud. I'll probably find out these (intelligent design proponents) are frauds." But I wound up knowing a lot more than when I started. I learned that Darwinism is being overhyped, and that it doesn't really convey what's going on. Sometimes if you follow a "truth" far enough, it becomes a lie.”
“But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy.”
Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) said by 1948 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Washington couldn't tell a lie, Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Reagan couldn't tell the difference.”
Mort Sahl (1927–2021) said by 2021 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a lie who always speaks the truth.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) first seen 1925 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Le Paquet Rouge" in Opéra (1925)
“A lie will gallop halfway round the world before the truth has time to pull its breeches on.”
Cordell Hull (1871–1955) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memoirs of Cordell Hull (1948), 1:220
“...a lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth ...”
Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) first seen 1975 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: translated from El Ontoño del Patriarica (1975) by Gregory Rabassa
“Self-portraiture is something one should never get involved in, since it is wrong to lie even though one endeavours to tell the truth.”
Ingmar Bergman (1918–2007) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Ingmar's self portrait" (1957) as quoted in "Who is he really?
“The subtlest lie of all is the full truth.”
Michael Moorcock (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Weep for me, whoever has charity, truth and justice! I did not come on this voyage for gain, honor or wealth, that is certain; for then the hope of all such things was dead. I came to Your Highnesses with honest purpose and sincere zeal; and I do not lie. I humbly beseech You Highnesses that, if it please God to remove me hence, you will help me to go to Rome and on other pilgrimages.”
Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) said by 1506 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People always told me, 'Be careful what you do, Don't go around breaking young girls' hearts,' And momma always told me, 'Be careful who you love, Be careful what you do, 'cause a lie becomes the truth.'”
Michael Jackson (1958–2009) said by 2009 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is easy to lie with statistics. It is hard to tell the truth without it.”
Andrejs Dunkels (1939–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: cited in: Andrea Varsavsky, Iven Mareels, Mark Cook (2010). Epileptic Seizures and the EEG. p. 89
“Never in the history of humanity has such an enormous amount of truth served as material for such a gigantic lie. Never before has humanity fallen into such great error based on the best information available. Today, education and skill serve to stupefy the masses as much as ignorance did in times past.”
Alexander Zinoviev (1922–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He managed to lie by implication while speaking words that were the literal truth, a skill he had grown good at, if not proud of.”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing helps a lie succeed more than a generous helping of the truth.”
“For woman is yin, the darkness within, where untempered passions lie. And man is yang, bright truth lighting our minds.”
“Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all were agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better looking than he had imagined.”
James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) said by 1891 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Honor to those who in the life they lead define and guard a Thermopylae. Never betraying what is right, consistent and just in all they do but showing pity also, and compassion; generous when they are rich, and when they are poor, still generous in small ways, still helping as much as they can; always speaking the truth, yet without hating those who lie.”
Constantine P. Cavafy (1863–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't know how to lie. But I don't know what truth is, either. I always try to speak the way I think will cause least trouble to God and men.”
Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some words hide the truth. Just as torture can be named enhanced interrogation, and logging of old-growth forests is named the Healthy Forest Initiative, words that lie about prostitution leave people confused about the nature of prostitution and trafficking. The words "sex work" make the harms of prostitution invisible.”
Melissa Farley (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“2762. In Matters of Slander, thou oughtest to suspend thy Judgment, and examine the Thing ; and not, as the common Custom is, persuade thyself, that common Report is sufficient warrant for the Truth of the Matters. Popular Opinion is the greatest Lie in the World.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]n attractive lie is always going to be more popular than a hard truth. (No. 11, p. 27)”
“But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
Khaled Hosseini (born 1965) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lyra sighed; she had forgotten how roundabout Scholars could be. It was difficult to tell them the truth when a lie would have been so much easier for them to understand.”
Philip Pullman (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth hurts and lie's worse.”
James Morrison (singer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.”
Christopher Hampton (born 1946) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone admits that "the truth hurts" but no one applies this adage to himself — and as soon as it begins to hurt us, we quickly repudiate it and call it a lie. It is this tendency toward self-deception (more than any active sin) that makes human progress slow and almost imperceptible.”
Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lie is a debt to the truth that will always come due.”
Kuruvilla Pandikattu (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I knew better than to let you break my heart The soul you'll never see again won't be showing scars You still love her I can see it in your eyes The truth is all that I can hear every time you lie.”
Demi Lovato (born 1992) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem is, only a few people get to be scientists. You see the dilemma? Given the choice between a truth they can appreciate and a lie they can live, most people will take you-know-what.”
James K. Morrow (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth is hard-hearted and unrelenting, too clear, precise; a lie is much more imaginative.”
Dejan Stojanovic (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A city of silence and truth, where success and failure, murderer and victim, come together, where thieves and policemen lie side by side in peace for the first and last time.”
Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006) said by 2006 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A thousand fools believe a lie, and it’s good as truth.”
Joan Slonczewski (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even though the risks are real, the sexes do differ on average, and we can’t just lie about that. What we should do instead is tell the truth carefully.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the second day, they started inviting their equally rowdy friends into my apartment, and we exchanged more small talk. To my indignant surprise, they asked me the question I always dreaded answering: “Are you a virgin?” I admitted that I was a virgin. I always admitted the truth about this. It was my life struggle, and I couldn’t lie about such a thing.”
Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Film is an artificial construct. It pretends to reconstruct reality. But it doesn't do that—it's a manipulative form. It's a lie that can reveal the truth. But if a film isn't a work of art, it's just complicit with the process of manipulation.”
Michael Haneke (born 1942) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51
“This gets better, it really does. The odd thing is, I actually think you might be telling the truth. If you were going to lie, you’d at least come up with something that made sense.”
Alastair Reynolds (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In actuality, Muppets was a word we just coined. It was merely to be the name of our act. ... I used to say to people that it was a combination of 'marionettes' and 'puppets.' ... But then I stopped telling this lie, and I'm back to the truth: It just came out of midair.”
Jim Henson (1936–1990) said by 1990 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For centuries men looked for comfort to their deepest anguish, but all answers seemed small before death. Until someone, it’s unknown who, discovered the truth. And since they saw it served all as an answer to the fears of the first man, they defended it with their blood and with the blood of others, first and then with the lie.”
Jorge Majfud (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Borrowing a chapter from the Nazis, they believe that the more often a lie is repeated, the more people are prone to accept it as truth. Nothing is too scandalous for them, and I am constantly amazed at the fact that at one time I was a close associate of people capable of such deceitful behavior.”
Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998) said by 1998 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in “Escape Artist: Recalling a YAF hero—the unlikely, liberating journey of Phillip Abbott Luce”, Shawn Steel, California Political Review, July-August (2000) pp. 23-28
“As I continued to walk step by step, the lie of life freed me from its clutches, and the universal truth of death swept over breath by breath.”
Gaurav Sharma (author) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source