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Truth quotes

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“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” Martin Luther King, Jr., “I have a Dream” - 28 August 1963

“If it is not right, do not do it: if it is not true, do not say it.” Marcus Aurelius, “Meditations” - c. 170 - 180

“The heart lies and the head plays tricks with us, but the eyes see true.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“Diamonds are found only in the dark places of the earth; truths are found only in the depths of thought.” Victor Hugo, “Les Misérables” - 1862

“The quick pain of truth can pass away, but the slow, eating agony of a lie is never lost.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell, “Politics and the English Language” - 1946

“He who cannot lie, doth not know what truth is.” Friedrich Nietzsche, “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” - 1891

“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” Mark Twain, “Following the Equator” - 1897

“Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“I saw that a man of truth must also be a man of care.” Mahatma Gandhi, “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” - 1929

“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.” Frederick Douglass, “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave” - 1845

“Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Henry David Thoreau, “Walden” - 1854

“Those truths which we know are very few in comparison with those which we do not know.” Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany” - 1615

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest” - 1895

“Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable.” Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” - 1942

“Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.” Isaac Asimov, “Foundation” - 1951

“When a man really tells the truth, the first truth he tells is that he himself is a liar.” G. K. Chesterton, “What's Wrong with the World” - 1910

“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.” Ulysses S. Grant, “Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant” - 1885

“Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find truth, for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.” Heraclitus, “On Nature” - c. 535 – c. 475 BCE

“The truth may be puzzling or counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held beliefs. Experiment is how we get a handle on it.” Carl Sagan, “The Demon-Haunted World” - 1995

“Sometimes it is easier to see clearly into the liar than into the man who tells the truth. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.” Albert Camus, “The Fall” - 1956

“Facts mean truth, and once we adhere to truth, the law comes to our aid naturally.” Mahatma Gandhi, “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” - 1929

“It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth, in other words, to silence.” Albert Camus, “The Plague” - 1947

“The fairest thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science.” Albert Einstein, “The world as I see it” - 1949

“A woman's standard of truthfulness was tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.” Edith Wharton, “The Age of Innocence” - 1920

“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read.” Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin” - 2000

“Tyrion says that people often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it’s served up.” George R. R. Martin, “A Clash of Kings” - 1999

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth.” Margaret Atwood, “The Blind Assassin” - 2000

“People always think something's all true.” J. D. Salinger, “The Catcher in the Rye” - 1951

“They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.” Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany” - 1615

“Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov” - 1880

“Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery.” Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “Crime and Punishment” - 1867

“I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world.” Charles Dickens, “David Copperfield” - 1850

“False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” William Shakespeare, “Macbeth” - 1623

“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” Mahatma Gandhi, “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” - 1929

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter” - 1850

“It is not down in any map; true places never are.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.” Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia” - 1785

“The opposite of every truth is just as true!” Hermann Hesse, “Siddhartha” - 1922

“There’s more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty.” John Steinbeck, “East of Eden” - 1952

“The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.” Terry Pratchett, “Hogfather” - 1996

“The truth . . . It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone” - 1997

“One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing.” Emma Goldman, “Anarchism and Other Essays” - 1910

“He was a lonely ghost uttering a truth that nobody would ever hear. But so long as he uttered it, in some obscure way the continuity was not broken. It was not by making yourself heard but by staying sane that you carried on the human heritage.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end: if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth—only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin with and, in the end, despair.” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

“And it is evident that it is not less repugnant that falsity or imperfection, in so far as it is imperfection, should proceed from God, than that truth or perfection should proceed from nothing.” René Descartes, “Discourse on the Method” - 1637

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty” Bertrand Russell, “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays” - 1910

“on the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth showing through.” Milan Kundera, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” - 1984

“That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.” Mahatma Gandhi, “The Story of my Experiments with Truth” - 1929

Related topics

lies knowledge beauty lie God falsehood life honesty science speech fiction story writing religion loneliness love men hiding happiness language

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