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Truth

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“...a great architect's creative power, his capacity to make something beautiful, lies in his capacity to observe correctly, and deeply. A painter's talent lies in his capacity to see – he sees more acutely, more precisely, what it is that really matters in a thing, and where its qualities come from.”
Christopher Alexander (1936–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the eve of the election last month my wife Judith and I were driving home late in the afternoon and turned on the radio for the traffic and weather. What we instantly got was a freak show of political pornography: lies, distortions, and half-truths — half-truths being perhaps the blackest of all lies. They paraded before us as informed opinion.”
Bill Moyers (1934–2025) first seen 2004 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Concerning right-wing radio shortly before the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election, onNOW (17 December 2004)
“Each day a few more lies eat into the seed with which we are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.”
Norman Mailer (1923–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On Invisibility" in Diary of an Unknown (1953)
“What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end.”
Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Observer (22 September 1957)
“And if there's any hope for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.”
Phil Ochs (1940–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The strength of Commonwealth lies in its diversity and it to be mindful of bearing economic, social, political and cultural systems which comprise its membership … Its commonality lies in its connection to humanity, in the main it has provided an invariable forum whose members to open and continue meaningful issues of concern.”
Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) first seen 2005 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Opening address to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association conference in Nadi, 6 September 2005.
“There is absolutely no doubt that our future as a nation, lies in drawing strength from the richness of the cultural diversity that surrounds us, for in that alone lies our sustainability and viability as a sovereign state.”
Mahendra Chaudhry (born 1942) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can never know everything, and part of what you know is always wrong. Perhaps even the most important part. A portion of wisdom lies in knowing that. A portion of courage lies in going on anyway.”
Robert Jordan (1948–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I remain terrified of the capacity of the media, the capacity of spin doctors, here and abroad, particularly the United States media, to perpetuate false lies, perpetuate lies.”
John le Carré (1931–2020) said by 2020 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He read about humanity’s age-old racial struggles. Had it really been less than half a millennium since humans contrived gigantic, fatuous lies about each other simply because of pigment shades, and killed millions because they believed their own lies?”
David Brin (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There's thieves among us Painting the walls All kinds of lies, and lies I never told it all”
Zooey Deschanel (born 1980) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And love lies bleeding in my hand. Oh it kills me to think of you with another man. I was playing rock and roll and you were just a fan. But my guitar couldn't hold you, So I split the band. Love lies bleeding in my hands.”
Elton John (born 1947) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe evolution is a dangerous theory for seven reasons. [...] It's based on nothing but lies; and Satan is the father of lies. The Evolution theory removes all morality and all ways to discover how to have morality. It is the foundation for humanism, racism, Nazism, communism, and the New World Order.”
Kent Hovind (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He is a Muslim. He can deny it, his apologists in the media can refute it, and his enablers can promote a narrative that he is a Christian. It’s a pack of lies. Obama is a Muslim and that is where his allegiance lies. Always has. Always will.”
James Woods (born 1947) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Tweet (December 24, 2017)
“This is not a political war at all. This is not a cultural war at all. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies, Satan, would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country, the United States of America.”
Rick Santorum (born 1958) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And nigh this toppling reed, still as the dead The great pike lies, the murderous patriarch, Watching the waterpit shelving and dark Where through the plash his lithe bright vassals thread.... He on the sandbank lies, Sunning himself long hours With stony gorgon eyes: Westward the hot sun lowers.”
Edmund Charles Blunden (1896–1974) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Pike", sts. 4 and 6. The Waggoner, &c. (1920) pp. 19–20
“Some live lies who won’t tell them; some tell lies who won’t live them.”
Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes the moral course lies within the politically possible, and sometimes the moral course lies outside of the politically possible. One of the great functions of radical candidates is to war against equivocators and opportunists who conflate these two things. Radicals expand the political imagination and, hopefully, prevent incrementalism from becoming a virtue.”
Ta-Nehisi Coates (born 1975) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?, The Atlantic, (19 Jan 2016)
“Corrupt men are always liars. Lies are their instruments, their pleasure, their solace. In time they come to believe their lies, or rather to half-believe them.”
Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) said by 1983 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each time a door closes, the rest of the world opens us. All we need to do is stop pounding on the door that just closed, turn around—which puts the door behind us—and welcome the largeness of life that now lies open to our souls. The door that closed kept us from entering a room, but what now lies before us is the rest of reality.”
Parker Palmer (born 1939) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“News outlets correct lies. Slimy political operations deliberately use lies to advance their agenda and smear their adversaries. MSNBC has proven over and over again that they are decisively in the latter category. This is just the latest but by no means the only or even worst example.”
Glenn Greenwald (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The secret of success behind all men of achievement, lies in the faculty of applying their intellect in all their activities, without being mislead by any surging emotions or feelings. The secret of success in life lies in keeping the head above the storms of the heart.”
Chinmayananda Saraswati (1916–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If people want to eat meat, they should kill the animals for themselves... Nor should they say that if they did not do it the slaughter would still go on... Every person who eats meat takes a share in that degradation of his fellow-men; on him and on her personally lies the share, and personally lies the responsibility.”
Annie Besant (1847–1933) said by 1933 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our deepest hope as humans lies in technology; but our deepest trust lies in nature. These forces are like tectonic plates grinding inexorably into each other in one, long, slow collision. This collision is not new, but more than anything else it is defining our era. Technology is steadily creating the dominant issues and upheavals of our time.”
W. Brian Arthur (born 1945) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are caught — trapped, some might say — in the web of fate, but we are each just as surely among its multitude of spinners. In our spinning lies our hope; in our spinning lies our destiny.”
Fenton Johnson (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our long-standing standards of capacity to deceive others were being subverted. The virtue of lying had lost its connection to advancing the common good. Noble deceptions were evolving into inferior falsehoods. That our virtuous lies were being distorted to conceal all manner of misdeeds tore at my newly discovered conscience. These lies served only a selected few. That seemed so wrong.”
L. K. Samuels (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I had forgotten the first rule: everybody lies about sex, and the client always lies about it.”
Glen Cook (born 1944) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How we fall into grace. You can't work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.”
Rick Bass (born 1958) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Colter: The True Story of the Best Dog I Ever Had (2000), p. viii
“There was no Zionist 'plan' or blanket policy of evicting the Arab population, or of 'ethnic cleansing'" and "the demonisation of Israel is largely based on lies—much as the demonisation of the Jews during the past 2,000 years has been based on lies. And there is a connection between the two.”
Benny Morris (born 1948) first seen 2008 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article in the Irish Times, 21 February 2008, Morris, Benny. The Irish Times, 21 February 2008, reported by Jeff Weintraub
“[W]e have become a country in which many people, regardless of their race, are willing to believe lies if the lies feel right to them, and suit their ideological preferences. Hannah Arendt said this kind of thing is a prelude to totalitarianism.”
Rod Dreher (born 1967) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fight for the purity and efficiency of the state apparatus will be the best tool in the fight against corruption. This will be concrete work, not the slogans that the authorities are guided by today. Lying will be excluded in the state system. We have become a world of lies, we must start by eliminating those lies.”
Robert Kocharyan (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For we are not tortured anymore; we have seen beyond your lies and disguises, and we have mastered the language of words, we have mastered speech and know we have also seen ourselves raw and naked piece by piece until our flesh lies flayed with blood on our own hands.”
Abena Busia (born 1953) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's all lies And my limbs have danced for the Amsterdam sunrise With not one restriction and not one disguise Monotony is what I despise Integration to society would be my demise It's all lies”
Alice Phoebe Lou (born 1993) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Amsterdam, Track 7 on Orbit (2016)
“Any awareness of how lies spread must generate a real sensitivity to the fact that most lies believed to be white are unnecessary if not downright undesirable.”
Sissela Bok (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Deceit was the new norm. ...Trump’s lies from the Washington Posts "Fact Checker" ...passed twenty thousand. ...[N]ow ...anti-science ... Lies that killed...”
Craig Unger (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: “All things are intrinsically one.” That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point. (Ch 2)”
Eckhart Tolle (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.”
Zoroaster wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course I have no right whatsoever to write down the truth about my life involving as it naturally does the lives of so many other people, but I do so urged by a necessity of truth-telling, because there is no living soul who knows the complete truth; here, may be one who knows a section; and there, one who knows another section: but to the whole picture not one is initiated.”
Vita Sackville-West (1892–1962) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Autobiographical sketch (23 July 1920), published in Portrait of a Marriage : Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson (1998), p. 3
“But the voice of anatomy, like the voice of all nature, never reaches the mental ear of the Great Commoner. It is the novel province of anatomy to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the structure, the origin and the history of man.”
Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) first seen 1926 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Evolution and Religion in Education : Polemics of the Fundamentalist (1926), p. 138
“When I really believe a thing, I mean that its truth possesses me. . . Truth is self-authenticating, and when it possesses me, nothing can shake it from its enthronement until some greater truth displaces it or gives it less prominence.”
Leslie Weatherhead (1893–1976) said by 1976 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How can we do justice even when it concerns truth itself, since for me only one truth exists, my truth, even if it is a delusion, yes, my delusion; my delusion.”
Imre Kertész (1929–2016) said by 2016 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pattern hummed. “Truth is individual.” “What? No it’s not. Truth is…it’s Truth. Reality.”
Brandon Sanderson (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My main interest... is the love of truth, whether pleasant or not. Truth is self-sufficient, and there is nothing to which it can be subordinated without loss. When truth is made subservient to anything else, however great (say religion), it becomes impure and sordid.”
George Sarton (1884–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Self-examination is the process of accountability to your soul...It is far better to "become" your truth than to speak your truth. Self-examination is the practice of becoming your truth.”
Caroline Myss (born 1952) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Entering the Castle : An Inner Path to God and Your Soul (2007), p. 66
“there is a higher truth and a lower truth, and it is the higher truth that is the proper subject of poetry.”
Florence Earle Coates (1850–1927) said by 1927 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“God knows that I would rather stand in the lowest place within the Truth, than in the highest without it. Nay, outside the Truth the higher the worse. It is only so much more opposition to Truth, so much more propagation of falsehood.”
Henry Edward Manning (1808–1892) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Robert Wilberforce (Rome, 15 February 1848); in Edmund Sheridan Purcell, Life of Cardinal Manning, Vol. I (London: Macmillan and Co., 1896), p. 513.
“Christianity is more than history; it is also a system of truths. Every event which its history records, either is a truth, or suggests a truth, or expresses a truth which man needs to assent to or to put into practice.”
Noah Porter (1811–1892) said by 1892 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 133.
“There's only truth and not truth. You're either very good or evil. I went back to my dorm and asked myself what I was. If your principles aren't grounded in absolute truth, you don't know what to think.”
Christine O'Donnell (born 1969) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Your truth is that you are a creation of God. Your truth can't change; it's permanent. When you can see your permanent truth clearly you'll be able to deal with any temporary condition effectively.”
Steve Maraboli (born 1975) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source