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Truth

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“Not from without us, only from within, Comes or can ever come upon us light Whereby the soul keeps ever truth in sight. No truth, no strength, no comfort man may win, No grace for guidance, no release from sin, Save of his own soul's giving.”
Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) said by 1909 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To a visitor who described himself as a seeker after Truth the Master said, "If what you seek is Truth, there is one thing you must have above all else." "I know. An overwhelming passion for it." "No. An unremitting readiness to admit you may be wrong.”
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where the presence of truth should be possible, it can be possible solely under the condition of the recognition of myth—that is, the recognition of its crushing indifference to truth.”
Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The real question is, Did God use evolution as His plan? If it could be shown that man, instead of being made in the image of God, is a development of beasts we would have to accept it, regardless of its effort, for truth is truth and must prevail. But when there is no proof we have a right to consider the effect of the acceptance of an unsupported hypothesis.”
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) said by 1925 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth isn't truth.”
Rudy Giuliani (born 1944) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 19, 2018, on NBC's Meet the Press Meet the Press - August 19, 2018. NBC News. 2018-08-19. Retrieved 2018-08-20.
“To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.”
Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, .
“You go to truth by way of poetry and I go to poetry by way of truth.”
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) said by 1824 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is as his own mind comes into contact with others that truth will begin to acquire value in the child's eyes and will consequently become a moral demand that can be made upon him. As long as the child remains egocentric, truth as such will fail to interest him and he will see no harm in transposing facts in accordance with his desires.”
Jean Piaget (1896–1980) said by 1980 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is whatever people will believe is the truth. Don't you know history?”
Joseph Heller (1923–1999) said by 1999 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We become obsessed with "truth" when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with "freedom" when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.”
J. L. Austin (1911–1960) said by 1960 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.”
Pythagoras (583–491 BC) said by 491 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 592
“If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God.”
Augustine of Hippo (354–430) said by 430 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have always had such sincere love for truth, that I have often begun by telling stories for the purpose of getting truth to enter the heads of those who could not appreciate its charms.”
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) said by 1798 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Memoirs (trans. Machen 1894), book 1, Preface
“Being precedes Truth, and … Truth precedes the Good.”
Josef Pieper (1904–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truth is the good of our knowing mind, upon which the mind fixes itself by nature; it is not granted to the mind to choose or not choose that good (truth!) on the basis, again, of knowledge. The finite mind does not comprehend itself so profoundly, and does not have such power over itself, that it follows its own light.”
Josef Pieper (1904–1997) said by 1997 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Atheists are also morally obligated to tell the truth as we see it. We should preach and proselytize too. We need to help believers. Someone who believes in god is wasting big parts of his or her life, holding back science and love, and giving "moral" support to dangerous extremists. If you believe something, you must share it; it's one of the ways we all learn about truth.”
Penn Jillette (born 1955) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering — rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer's words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Review of Selected Essays by Simone Weil, The New York Review of Books (1 February 1963)
“The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is.”
Susan Sontag (1933–2004) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Benefactor (1963), Ch. 1, p. 1, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
“Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) said by 1902 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As the Holy Koran tells us: "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth." That is what I will try to do today - to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.”
Barack Obama (born 1961) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This book founds a doctrine which is effectively post-Cartesian, or even post-Lacanian, a doctrine of what, for thought, both un-binds the Heidegerean connection between being and truth and institutes the subject, not as support or origin, but as fragment of the process of a truth.”
Alain Badiou (born 1937) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We Americans are idealists. We are willing to follow the truth solely because it is the truth. We put our main emphasis on the things which are spiritual. While we possess an unsurpassed skill in marshaling and using the material resources of the world, still the nation has not sought for wealth and power as an end but as a means to a higher life.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The game must be played, and played their way, though they made all the rules and had all the skill. His ineptitude did not matter. His honesty did. He was staked now totally on one belief: that an honest man cannot be cheated, that truth, if the game be played through right to the end, will lead to truth.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A scientist can pretend that his work isn’t himself, it’s merely the impersonal truth. An artist can’t hide behind the truth. He can’t hide anywhere.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If I don’t speak truth I can’t seek truth.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are volcanoes. When we women offer our experience as our truth, as human truth, all the maps change. There are new mountains.”
Ursula K. Le Guin (1929–2018) first seen 1986 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Bryn Mawr Commencement Address" (1986)
“He inherited from his mother's stories the fundamental style he used, unaltered, in his own stories: namely, the assumption that fact may not be truth, and truth may not be factual.”
Haruki Murakami (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only a weak society needs government protection or intervention before it pursues its resolve to preserve the truth. Truth needs neither handcuffs nor a badge for its vindication.”
Anthony Kennedy (born 1936) first seen 2012 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: United States v. Alvarez, 567 U.S. 709 (2012), Part IV.
“No matter how seemingly unconnected with human affairs or remote from human interests a newly-discovered truth may appear to be, time and genius will some day make it minister to human welfare. When Dr. Franklin was once sceptically asked what was the use of some recondite and far-off truth which had just been brought to light, "What," said he, "is the use of babies?”
Horace Mann (1796–1859) said by 1859 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The supremacy of expediency is being refuted by time and truth. Time is an essential dimension of existence defiant of man's power, and truth reigns in supreme majesty, unrivaled, inimitable, and can never be defeated.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) said by 1972 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An open society such as ours is based on the recognition that our understanding of reality is inherently imperfect. Nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. As the philosopher Karl Popper has shown, the ultimate truth is not attainable even in science. All theories are subject to testing and the process of replacing old theories with better ones never ends.”
George Soros (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) said by 2008 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Above all, I would teach him to tell the truth. Truth-telling, I have found, is the key to responsible citizenship. The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.”
J. Edgar Hoover (1895–1972) first seen 1963 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What I Would Tell a Son" Family Weekly (14 July 1963).
“Once the truth is denied to human beings, it is pure illusion to try to set them free. Truth and freedom either go together hand in hand or together they perish in misery.”
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
“To believe it possible to know a universally valid truth is in no way to encourage intolerance; on the contrary, it is the essential condition for sincere and authentic dialogue between persons. On this basis alone is it possible to overcome divisions and to journey together towards full truth”
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) first seen 1998 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encyclical Fides et Ratio, 14 September 1998
“People who pride themselves on their "complexity" and deride others for being "simplistic" should realize that the truth is often not very complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”
Thomas Sowell (born 1930) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the mercy seat is melting, And I think my blood is boiling, And in a way I'm spoiling, All the fun with all this truth and consequence. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, And anyway I told the truth, And I'm not afraid to die.”
Nick Cave (born 1957) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“See, when you take a little bit of truth and then you mix it with untruth, or your theory, that's where you get people to believe. You know? It's like Hitler. Hitler said a little bit of truth, and then he mixed in "and it's the Jews' fault." That's where things get a little troublesome, and that's exactly what's happening.”
Glenn Beck (born 1964) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people are looking for the truth and i do believe that truth will win out in the end.”
Ron Paul (born 1935) first seen 2019 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reflecting On The Past & Anticipating The Future, Ron Paul Liberty Report], YouTube (31 December 2019)
“I think we must reflect more on what democracy in the exercise of authority would mean. Is truth determined by a majority vote, only for a new 'truth' to be 'discovered' by a new majority tomorrow?”
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022) first seen 1996 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Public Square, by Richard John Neuhaus, First Things 1996
“Relations between States and within States are correct to the extent that they respect the truth. When, instead, truth is violated, peace is threatened, law is endangered, then, as a logical consequence, forms of injustice are unleashed.”
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In Address to the International Diplomats Address to the International Diplomats (18 March 2006)
“Society today is being fragmented by a way of thinking that is inherently short-sighted because it disregards the full horizon of truth - the truth about God and about us. By its nature, relativism fails to see the whole picture. It ignores the very principles that enable us to live and flourish in unity, order and harmony.”
Pope Benedict XVI (1927–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“About truth I have always been monotheistic. It has been an article of faith with me, going back to college days, that there is a truth and that it is knowable.”
Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people — as may be noticed of most young children — does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.”
Dinah Craik (1826–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Yes, I have tricks in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the opposite of a stage magician. He gives you illusion that has the appearance of truth. I give you truth in the pleasant disguise of illusion.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Josaia Waqabaca: "Commander Bainimarama is clean and fighting for the truth. The stand he is taking is going to save the Fijian race. Today, in the streets ordinary Fijians are talking about the truth and cleanliness, which is hard to find in this government." (11 January 2006; quoted in Fiji Sun).”
Frank Bainimarama (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We call the mind that wants to make the way of the Universe clear and to put it into practice the mind that seeks truth. However clever a dog or a monkey may be, they cannot realize the universal mind. Only human beings have the privilege and capacity to realize it. If you have a mind that seeks truth, you are happy because this is the proof that you are a real human being.”
Koichi Tohei (1920–2011) said by 2011 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source