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Truth quotes

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

“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

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

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

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

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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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 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

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

“Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.” William James, “The Varieties of Religious Experience” - 1902

“In the end, you can’t censor the truth, especially when it comes packaged in hot music.” Jay-Z, “Decoded” - 2010

“Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” Oscar Wilde, “Intentions” - 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

“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

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

“My dear fellow, the truth isn't quite the sort of thing one tells to a nice, sweet, refined girl.” Oscar Wilde, “The Importance of Being Earnest” - 1895

“The truth you speak doth lack some gentleness, and time to speak it in; you rub the sore, when you should bring the plaster.” William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” - 1623

“They breathe truth that breathe their words in pain.” William Shakespeare, “Richard II” - 1595

“Truth hath a quiet breast.” William Shakespeare, “Richard II” - 1595

“When one fib becomes due as it were, you must forge another to take up the old acceptance; and so the stock of your lies in circulation inevitably multiplies, and the danger of detection increases every day.” William Makepeace Thackeray, “Vanity Fair” - 1847

“O, while you live, tell truth, and shame the Devil!” William Shakespeare, “Henry IV, Part 1” - 1597

“Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.” Edgar Allan Poe, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” - 1842

“I am as true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the infancy of truth.” William Shakespeare, “Troilus and Cressida” - 1609

“There is no time so miserable but a man may be true.” William Shakespeare, “Timon of Athens” - 1623

“Whose tongue soe'er speaks false, not truly speaks; who speaks not truly, lies.” William Shakespeare, “King John” - 1623

“Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“Some truths did not bear saying, and some lies were necessary.” George R. R. Martin, “A Game of Thrones” - 1996

“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

“Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” George Orwell, “1984” - 1949

“But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound.” Herman Melville, “Moby-Dick” - 1851

“The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.” Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” - 1849

“Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.” Henry David Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience” - 1849

“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

“If no set of moral ideas were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi morality.” C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity” - 1952

“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

“I try not to speak about the charities and people I help, because I believe we can only be truly generous when we expect nothing in return.” Muhammad Ali, “The Soul of a Butterfly” - 2004

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” - 1841

Related topics

knowledge life God lie lies science honesty religion loneliness falsehood men speech justice beauty fiction philosophy humanity writing error women

Related authors

William Shakespeare (8)
Mahatma Gandhi (5)
Oscar Wilde (4)
George R. R. Martin (4)
George Orwell (4)
John Locke (4)
Galileo Galilei (4)
René Descartes (3)
Blaise Pascal (3)
Henry David Thoreau (2)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Ralph Waldo Emerson (2)
Victor Hugo (2)
Nathaniel Hawthorne (2)
Thomas Carlyle (2)
Edith Wharton (2)
Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (2)
Frederick Douglass (2)
Thomas Jefferson (2)
John Steinbeck (2)

Related sources

The Story of my Experiments with Truth (5)
A Game of Thrones (4)
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (4)
1984 (3)
Discourse on the Method (3)
Pensées (3)
The Importance of Being Earnest (2)
Richard II (2)
Civil Disobedience (2)
Mere Christianity (2)
Self-Reliance (2)
Les Misérables (2)
The Scarlet Letter (2)
On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and The Heroic in History (2)
The Age of Innocence (2)
The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (2)
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (2)
Notes on the State of Virginia (2)
East of Eden (2)
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (2)