Truth

Truth is always strange — stranger than fiction. ~ Lord Byron

Truth is a term used to indicate various forms of accord with fact or reality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard or ideal. Derived from Old English tríewþ, tréowþ, trýwþ, Middle English trewþe, cognate to Old High German triuwida, Old Norse tryggð; both it and true can indicate "having good faith or Loyalty. The opposite of truth is falsehood, which, correspondingly, can also take on logical, factual, or ethical meanings. Language and words are a means by which humans convey information to one another in semiotic associations, and the method used to recognize a "truth" is termed a criterion of truth. There are differing claims as to what constitutes truth, what things are truthbearers capable of being true or false, how to define and identify truth, the roles that revealed and acquired knowledge play, and whether truth is subjective or objective, relative or absolute.

Quotes

Arranged alphabetically by author
Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness. ~ Thomas Paine
Do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon. ~ Young boy in The Matrix
  • Time, beneath whose influence the pyramids moulder into dust, and the flinty rocks decay, does not and cannot destroy a fact, nor strip a truth of one portion of its essential importance.
    • Anonymous statement, quoted in The Homilist; or, The pulpit for the People (1873) edited by David Thomas, p. 55.
  • The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts… Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going to make much progress.
    • Michael Adams, lexicology professor at North Carolina State University, discussing the neologism "truthiness", defined as "the quality of stating concepts one wishes or believes to be true, rather than the facts" in "Linguists Vote 'Truthiness' Word of 2005", AP via Yahoo! News, (6 January 2006)
  • Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.
    • Theodor Adorno in Minima Moralia (1951), as translated by E. Jephcott (1974), § 143, p. 222.
  • To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true.
  • Not being known doesn't stop the truth from being true.
  • You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety.
  • What is truth? said jesting Pilate, but would not stay for an answer.
  • But no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth.
    • Francis Bacon, Essays, Of Truth; reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 603; in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 818.
  • Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth.
  • Nothing is wholly obvious without becoming enigmatic. Reality itself is too obvious to be true.
    • Jean Baudrillard, in The Perfect Crime (1993), as translated by Ian Michel and William Sarah (1995)
  • The world is made up, for the most part, of fools and knaves, both irreconcilable foes to truth.
    • George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham, "Letter to Mr. Clifford, on his Human Reason"; also in The Works of His Grace, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham (London: T. Evans, 1770) vol. 2, p. 105.
  • We talked of the casuistical question, Whether it was allowable at any time to depart from Truth? JOHNSON. 'The general rule is, that Truth should never be violated, because it is of the utmost importance to the comfort of life, that we should have a full security by mutual faith; and occasional inconveniences should be willingly suffered that we may preserve it. There must, however, be some exceptions. If, for instance, a murderer should ask you which way a man is gone, you may tell him what is not true, because you are under a previous obligation not to betray a man to a murderer.' BOSWELL. 'Supposing the person who wrote Junius were asked whether he was the authour, might he deny it?' JOHNSON. 'I don't know what to say to this. If you were sure that he wrote Junius, would you, if he denied it, think as well of him afterwards? Yet it may be urged, that what a man has no right to ask, you may refuse to communicate; and there is no other effectual mode of preserving a secret and an important secret, the discovery of which may be very hurtful to you, but a flat denial; for if you are silent, or hesitate, or evade, it will be held equivalent to a confession. But stay, Sir; here is another case. Supposing the authour had told me confidentially that he had written Junius, and I were asked if he had, I should hold myself at liberty to deny it, as being under a previous promise, express or implied, to conceal it. Now what I ought to do for the authour, may I not do for myself? But I deny the lawfulness of telling a lie to a sick man for fear of alarming him. You have no business with consequences; you are to tell the truth. Besides, you are not sure what effect your telling him that he is in danger may have. It may bring his distemper to a crisis, and that may cure him. Of all lying, I have the greatest abhorrence of this, because I believe it has been frequently practised on myself.'
    I cannot help thinking that there is much weight in the opinion of those who have held, that Truth, as an eternal and immutable principle, ought, upon no account whatever, to be violated, from supposed previous or superiour obligations, of which every man being to judge for himself, there is great danger that we too often, from partial motives, persuade ourselves that they exist; and probably whatever extraordinary instances may sometimes occur, where some evil may be prevented by violating this noble principle, it would be found that human happiness would, upon the whole, be more perfect were Truth universally preserved.
  • Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light — every eye looking on finds its own.
  • For truth is precious and divine;
    Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.
  • 'Tis not antiquity, nor author,
    That makes truth truth, altho' time's daughter.
  • 'Tis strange—but true; for truth is always strange,
    Stranger than fiction.
  • 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.
  • The wayfarer,
    Perceiving the pathway to truth,
    Was struck with astonishment.
    It was thickly grown with weeds.
    "Ha," he said,
    "I see that none has passed here
    In a long time."
    Later he saw that each weed
    Was a singular knife.
    "Well," he mumbled at last,
    "Doubtless there are other roads."
  • If the truth were a palpable object, it would be a modeling clay.
    • André Dahmer, in the Brazilian webcomic Malvados
  • If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
  • Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
    Success in Circuit lies
    Too bright for our infirm Delight
    The Truth's superb surprise

    As Lightning to the Children eased
    With explanation kind
    The Truth must dazzle gradually
    Or every man be blind —

  • If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
    • Fyodor Dostoevsky, in a letter To Mme. N. D. Fonvisin (1854), as published in Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends (1914), translated by Ethel Golburn Mayne, Letter XXI, p. 71.
  • Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.
  • For truth has such a face and such a mien,
    As to be lov'd needs only to be seen.
    • John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther (1687), Part I, line 33.
  • The enemy is subtle, how be it we're deceived? When the truth's in our hearts and we still don't believe?
  • Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow...that it passes through
  • Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
    • Albert Einstein, in "My Credo", a speech to the German League of Human Rights, Berlin (Autumn 1932), as published in Einstein: A Life in Science (1994) by Michael White and John Gribbin, p. 262.
  • Epicurus spoke of all perceptible things as true and as beings. For there is no difference between saying that something is true and saying that it is real; hence, too, in delineating the true and the false he says “That which holds in the way in which it is said to hold is true,” and he says “That which does not hold in the way in which it is said to hold is false.”
    • Sextus Empiricus, paraphrasing and quoting epicurean description of truth and falsehood in "Against the Mathematicians" (Adversus Mathematicos) II, 9.
  • Truth is cosmically total: synergetic. Verities are generalized principles stated in semimetaphorical terms. Verities are differentiable. But love is omniembracing, omnicoherent, and omni-inclusive, with no exceptions. Love, like synergetics, is nondifferentiable, i.e., is integral.
    • Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.54.
  • The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love.
    • Buckminster Fuller, Synergetics : Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (1975) 1005.56.
  • Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.
    • Mahatma Gandhi, as quoted in Young India (8 January 1925); also in The Essential Gandhi : An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work and Ideas (1962) edited by Louis Fischer, p. 174.
  • A man of truth must also be a man of care.
  • An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.
  • Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.
  • It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak.
  • What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it.
  • All truths are not to be told.
  • That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
  • In this life-long fight, to be waged by every one of us singlehanded against a host of foes, the last requisite for a good fight, the last proof and test of our courage and manfulness, must be loyalty to truth — the most rare and difficult of all human qualities. For such loyalty, as it grows in perfection, asks ever more and more of us, and sets before us a standard of manliness always rising higher and higher.
  • And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter.
  • Yet ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
  • I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
  • Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth. As thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
    • Jesus in John 17:17 - 19.
  • But at the end of the day, the truth is not determined by what makes you feel warm and safe. It is not determined by what gets you the most friends. It is not determined by what makes people be nice to each other. It is not determined by a cost-benefit analysis of holding a certain belief. It is determined by reality. And those who willingly compromise their understanding of reality still have to live in it. They just might find themselves without a decent map.
  • Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
  • There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.
  • Just gimme some truth — all I want is the truth.
  • Truth certainly would do well enough, if she were once left to shift for herself. She seldom has received and, I fear, never will receive much assistance from the power of great men, to whom she is but rarely known and more rarely welcome. She is not taught by laws, nor has she any need of force to procure her entrance into the minds of men. Errors, indeed, prevail by the assistance of foreign and borrowed succours. But if Truth makes not her way into the understanding by her own light, she will be but the weaker for any borrowed force violence can add to her.
  • Truth is a very difficult concept, many faceted.
    • Ian McDonald, senior Ministry of Defence Civil Servant, giving evidence to the Scott Inquiry on (6 October 1993), quoted in "Faded idol returns with same old song" by Joe Joseph and Michael Dynes The Times (7 October 1993).
  • The Ultimate Truth is called God. This one can realize in the state of Nirvikalpa Samadhi. A circle can have only one centre but it can have numerous radii. The centre can be compared to God and the radii to religions. So, no one sect, no one religion or book can make an absolute claim of It. He who works for It gets It.
  • Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.
    • Isaac Newton, Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions] (c. 1664).
  • Suppose truth is a woman, what then?
  • The "general welfare" is not the sphere of truth; for truth demands to be declared even if it is ugly and unethical.
  • What then is truth? A movable host of metaphors, metonymies, and; anthropomorphisms: in short, a sum of human relations which have been poetically and rhetorically intensified, transferred, and embellished, and which, after long usage, seem to a people to be fixed, canonical, and binding.
  • At every step one has to wrestle for truth; one has to surrender for it almost everything to which the heart, to which our love, our trust in life, cling otherwise. That requires greatness of soul: the service of truth is the hardest service. What does it mean, after all, to have integrity in matters of the spirit? That one is severe against one's heart...that one makes of every Yes and No a matter of conscience.
  • The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful then the truths of little men.
  • I think that natural truths will cease to be spat at us like insults, that aesthetics will once more be linked with ethics, and that people will become aware that in casting out aesthetics that they also cast out a respect for human life, a respect for creation, a respect for spiritual values. Aesthetics was an expression of man's need to be in love with his world. The cult of ugliness is a regression. It destroys our appetite, our love for our world.
  • To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.
    • George Orwell, Collected Essays, Vol. IV. In front of Your Nose.
  • Truth will triumph. It always does. However, I figure truth is a variable, so we're right back where we started from.
  • Such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing. The sun needs no inscription to distinguish him from darkness.
  • Those philosophers who believe in the absolute logic of truth have never had to discuss it on close terms with a woman.
  • Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.
    • Benjamin Peirce, on Euler's identity, e^{i \pi} + 1 = 0. \,\! as quoted in notes by W. E. Byerly, published in Benjamin Peirce, 1809-1880: Biographical Sketch and Bibliography (1925) by R. C. Archibald; also in Mathematics and the Imagination (1940) by Edward Kasner and James Newman
  • The truth isn't easily pinned to a page. In the bathtub of history the truth is harder to hold than the soap, and much more difficult to find...
  • Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
  • Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
    • Franklin D. Roosevelt, radio address 26 October 1939, as reported in The Baltimore Sun (27 October 1939).
  • The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
  • When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.
    • Roger Scruton, "Should he have spoken?", The New Criterion (September 2006), p. 22; also in The Roger Scruton Reader (2009) edited by Mark Dooley
  • To thine own self be true,
    And it must follow, as the night the day,
    Thou canst not then be false to any man.
  • If circumstances lead me, I will find
    Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed
    Within the centre.
  • Tell truth and shame the devil.
    If thou have power to raise him, bring him hither,
    And I'll be sworn I have power to shame him hence.
  • But 'tis strange:
    And oftentimes, to win us to our harm,
    The instruments of darkness tell us truths,
    Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
    In deepest consequence.
  • Methinks the truth should live from age to age,
    As 'twere retail'd to all posterity,
    Even to the general all-ending day.
  • The word "truth" applies to a man's dignity.
  • You can't handle the truth.
    • Aaron Sorkin in A Few Good Men, lines spoken by Jack Nicholson in the film version of his play
  • The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
    • Rabindranath Tagore in The Fourfold Way of India (1924); this has become paraphrased as "Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend".
  • It takes two to speak the truth — one to speak, and another to hear.
  • This above all: to thine own self be true,
    And it must follow, as the night the day,
    Thou canst not then be false to any man.
    • William Shakespeare (1564–1616), British poet and dramatist. Hamlet (1600-02), Act I, sc. iii. (Polonius giving advice to his son Laertes, departing for France.).
  • I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth.
    • Edward Teller, as quoted in The Martians of Science : Five Physicists Who Changed the Twentieth Century (2006) by Istvan Hargittai, p. 251
  • Boris asked him to tell them how and where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly, involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told the truth to his hearers — who like himself had often heard stories of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and were expecting to hear just such a story — they would either not have believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And so he told them all that.
  • Do not try to bend the spoon — that's impossible. Instead only try to realize the truth: There is no spoon.
  • In order to be effective truth must penetrate like an arrow — and that is likely to hurt.
  • There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.
  • Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
  • If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
    • Oscar Wilde, "Phrases and Philosophies for the use of the young", in The Chameleon (December 1894).
  • Truth conceived as God is of course the Absolute. Truth perceived by man must always be relative, changing according to human contacts developing as men understand better each other, their circumstances and themselves. Gandhi never set out to develop a fixed and final doctrine, but emphasized that his practice of ahimsa, or nonviolence, was always experimental, that his political struggle like his personal life was part of a continuing quest for Truth as manifested existentially, a quest that could never end because human understanding was incapable of comprehending the Absolute.
    The identification of Truth as the goal of political action, as well as of religious devotion, and the refusal to distinguish between religion and politics, form the background to the great divergences between Gandhi's revolutionary ideas and techniques and those of other contemporary revolutionists. … Unorthodox though he might be, Gandhi fitted into the traditional pattern of the sanyassi who practices non‑attachment in the search for Truth; he was the karma yogin, the man who perfects and purifies himself through action. Yogic disciplines of all kinds are held in India to confer power over destiny, and Gandhi believed that positive action — love and nonviolence — could intangibly influence men and therefore events. With Truth as the goal and at the same time as the principle of action (for in Gandhian terms ends are emergent from means and hence virtually indistinguishable from them), there was no place in Gandhi's idea of revolution for conspiratorial methods or guerrilla activities.
  • Pure truth no man has seen, nor ever shall know.
  • Truth never was indebted to a lie.
    • Edward Young, Night Thoughts (1742-1745), Night VIII, line 587.
  • Information is not knowledge. Knowledge is not wisdom. Wisdom is not truth. Truth is not beauty. Beauty is not love. Love is not music. Music is the best!
  • These are the things that ye shall do; Speak ye every man the truth to his neighbour; execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates
    • bible, Zechariah 8:16
  • love the truth and peace
    • bible, Zechariah 8:19
  • Tell the truth, then run.
    • Yugoslavian proverb, as quoted in The 2548 Best Things Anybody Ever Said (2001) by Robert Byrne
  • There are cases when the simple truth is difficult to tell,
    When 'tis better that the truth should not be known,
    So we'd better leave her lying at the bottom of the well,
    And agree to let both truth and well alone.
    • Unknown, quoted in Under Queen and Khedive : The Autobiography of an Anglo-Egyptian Official (1899) by Walter Frederick Miéville

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 818-22.
  • Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written.
  • How sweet the words of Truth, breath'd from the lips of Love.
  • To say the truth, though I say 't that should not say 't.
  • Le vrai peut quelquefois n'être pas vraisemblable.
  • Think truly, and thy thoughts
    Shall the world's famine feed.
    Speak truly, and each word of thine
    Shall be a fruitful seed.
    Live truly, and thy life shall be
    A great and noble creed.
  • Magna est veritas et prævalebit.
    • Truth is mighty and will prevail.
    • Thomas Brooks is said to have been the first to use the expression (1662). Found in Walter Scott, Talisman, Chapter XIX. Bishop Jewel. Purchas, Microcosmus. William Thackeray, Roundabout Papers. "O magna vis veritas." Found in Cicero, Oratio Pro Cœlio Rufo, XXVI
  • Se non è vero, è molto ben trovato.
    • If it is not true it is very well invented.
    • Giordano Bruno, Degli Eroici Furori. Cardinal d'Este, of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso.
  • Truth crushed to earth shall rise again:
    Th' eternal years of God are hers;
    But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
    And dies among his worshippers.
  • Truth makes on the ocean of nature no one track of light—every eye looking on finds its own.
  • Better be cheated to the last,
    Than lose the blessed hope of truth.
  • More proselytes and converts use t' accrue
    To false persuasions than the right and true;
    For error and mistake are infinite,
    But truth has but one way to be i' th' right.
  • No words suffice the secret soul to show,
    For Truth denies all eloquence to Woe.
  • A man protesting against error is on the way towards uniting himself with all men that believe in truth.
  • Truths turn into dogmas the moment they are disputed.
  • When fiction rises pleasing to the eye,
    Men will believe, because they love the lie;
    But truth herself, if clouded with a frown,
    Must have some solemn proof to pass her down.
  • Qui semel a veritate deflexit, hic non majore religione ad perjurium quam ad mendacium perduci consuevit.
    • He who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as he would tell a lie.
    • Cicero, Oratio Pro Quinto Roscio Comœdo, XX
  • Natura inest mentibus nostris insatiabilis quædam cupiditas veri videndi.
    • Our minds possess by nature an insatiable desire to know the truth.
    • Cicero, Tusculanarum Disputationum. I. 18.
  • For truth is unwelcome, however divine.
  • But what is truth? 'Twas Pilate's question put
    To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply.
  • Nature * * * has buried truth deep in the bottom of the sea.
    • Democritus, quoted by Cicero, Academic Questions, Book II, Chapter X. C. D. Yonge's translation. Credited to Democritus by Lactantius, Institutiones, Book III, Chapter XXVIII.
  • The first great work (a task performed by few)
    Is that yourself may to yourself be true.
  • Truth is immortal; error is mortal.
  • Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.
  • The greater the truth the greater the libel.
    • Attributed to Lord Ellenborough (c. 1789). Burns credits it to Lord Mansfield.
  • The nobler the truth or sentiment, the less imports the question of authorship.
  • Though love repine and reason chafe,
    There came a voice without reply,
    "'Tis man's perdition to be safe,
    When for the truth he ought to die."
  • Vincer veris.
    • I am conquered by truth.
    • Erasmus, Diluculum.
  • But above all things truth beareth away the victory.
    • I Esdras, III. 12. Inscription on the New York Public Library
  • Great is truth, and mighty above all things.
    • I Esdras, IV. 41.
  • Si je tenais toutes les vérités dans ma main, je me donnerais bien de garde de l'ouvrir aux hommes.
    • If I held all of truth in my hand I would beware of opening it to men.
    • Fontenelle
  • Truth only smells sweet forever, and illusions, however innocent, are deadly as the canker worm.
  • Lest men suspect your tale untrue,
    Keep probability in view.
    • John Gay, The Painter who Pleased Nobody and Everybody.
  • Alius quidam veterum pœtarum cuius nomen mihi nunc memoriæ non est veritatem temporis filiam esse dixit.
    • There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said Truth is the daughter of Time.
    • Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticæ, XII. 11. Par. 2. Veritas temporis filia. Found on the reverse of several coins of Queen Mary I
  • Her terrible tale
    You can't assail,
    With truth it quite agrees;
    Her taste exact
    For faultless fact
    Amounts to a disease.
  • Truth like a torch, the more 'tis shook, it shines.
    • Sir William Hamilton, Discussions on Philosophy, Title Page
  • One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so: for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
  • Dare to be true, nothing can need a lie;
    A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.
  • Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day, like a foot-ball, and it will be round and full at evening.
  • Nuda veritas. (Nudaque veritas).
    • The naked truth.
    • Horace, Carmina, I, 24, 7.
  • Quid verum atque decens curo et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.
    • My cares and my inquiries are for decency and truth, and in this I am wholly occupied.
    • Horace, Epistles, I. 1. 11.
  • Ridentem dicere verum,
    Quid vetat.
    • What forbids a man to speak the truth in a laughing way?
    • Horace, Satires, I. 24.
  • The truth shall make you free.
    • John, VIII. 32.
  • There is no truth in him.
    • John, VIII. 44.
  • Le contraire des bruits qui courent des affaires ou des personnes est souvent la vérité.
    • The opposite of what is noised about concerning men and things is often the truth.
    • Jean de La Bruyère, Les Caractères, XII
  • La vérité ne fait pas tant de bien dans le monde, que ses apparences y font de mal.
  • Veritatem laborare nimis sæpe, aiunt, extingui nunquam.
    • It is said that truth is often eclipsed but never extinguished.
    • Livy, Annales, XXII. 39.
  • The best way to come to truth being to examine things as really they are, and not to conclude they are, as we fancy of ourselves, or have been taught by others to imagine.
    • John Locke, Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter XII
  • To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
    • John Locke, letter to Anthony Collins, Esq. (Oct. 29, 1703).
  • When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch's fire;
    Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus Truth silences the liar.
  • Who dares
    To say that he alone has found the truth?
  • Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like
    A star new-born that drops into its place
    And which, once circling in its placid round,
    Not all the tumult of the earth can shake.
  • Put golden padlocks on Truth's lips, be callous as ye will,
    From soul to soul, o'er all the world, leaps one electric thrill.
  • Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust,
    Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be just;
    Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside,
    Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.
  • Truth forever on the scaffold. Wrong forever on the throne.
  • Children and fooles speake true.
  • But there is no veil like light—no adamantine armor against hurt like the truth.
  • Veritatis absolutus sermo ac semper est simplex.
    • The language of truth is unadorned and always simple.
    • Ammianus Marcellinus, Annales, XIV, 10.
  • Pericula veritati sæpe contigua.
    • Truth is often attended with danger.
    • Ammianus Marcellinus, Annales, XXVI, 1.
  • Truth, when not sought after, sometimes comes to light.
  • Not a truth has to art or to science been given,
    But brows have ached for it, and souls toil'd and striven;
    And many have striven, and many have fail'd,
    And many died, slain by the truth they assail'd.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto VI, Stanza 1.
  • Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.
  • Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
    When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones,
    Forget not.
  • I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.
  • For oh, 'twas nuts to the Father of Lies,
    (As this wily fiend is named in the Bible)
    To find it settled by Laws so wise
    That the greater the truth, the worse the libel.
  • I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
  • In the mountains of truth, you never climb in vain.
  • We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
  • Naked Truth needs no shift.
  • Ego verum amo, verum volo mihi dici; mendacem odi.
    • I love truth and wish to have it always spoken to me: I hate a liar.
    • Plautus, Mostellaria, I. 3. 26.
  • When truth or virtue an affront endures,
    Th' affront is mine, my friend, and should be yours.
  • Farewell then, verse, and love, and ev'ry toy,
    The rhymes and rattles of the man or boy;
    What right, what true, what fit we justly call,
    Let this be all my care—for this is all.
  • Dum omnia quærimus, aliquando ad verum, ubi minime expectavimus, pervenimus.
    • While we are examining into everything we sometimes find truth where we least expected it.
    • Quintilian, De Institutione Oratoria, XII. 8. 3.
  • Let us seek the solution of these doubts at the bottom of the inexhaustible well, where Heraclitus says that truth is hidden.
  • Die Treue warnt vor drohenden Verbrechen,
    Die Rachgier spricht von den begangenen.
    • Truth warns of threatening crimes,
      Malice speaks of those which were committed.
    • Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos, III. 4. 124.
  • Involuta veritas in alto latet.
    • Truth lies wrapped up and hidden in the depths.
    • Seneca, De Beneficiis, VII. 1.
  • Veritatem dies aperit.
    • Time discovers truth.
    • Seneca, De Ira, II. 22.
  • Veritatis simplex oratio est.
    • The language of truth is simple.
    • Seneca, Epistolæ Ad Lucilium, XLIX
  • Veritas odit moras.
    • Truth hates delays.
    • Seneca, Œdipus, 850.
  • And simple truth miscall'd simplicity,
    And captive good attending captain ill.
  • Truth needs no colour, with his colour fix'd;
    Beauty no pencil, beauty's truth to lay;
    But best is best, if never intermix'd.
  • When my love swears that she is made of truth,
    I do believe her, though I know she lies.
  • All great truths begin as blasphemies.
  • My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world.
  • Truth and, by consequence, liberty, will always be the chief power of honest men.
  • Tell truth, and shame the devil.
  • Veritas visu et mora, falsa festinatione et incertis valescunt.
    • Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay: falsehood by haste and uncertainty.
    • Tacitus, Annales (AD 117), II. 39.
  • Truth-teller was our England's Alfred named?
  • And friendly free discussion calling forth
    From the fair jewel Truth its latent ray.
  • It takes two to speak the truth—one to speak, and another to hear.
  • Tell the truth or trump—but get the trick.
  • There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.
    • Voltaire, letter to Cardinal de Bernis (23 April 1761).
  • There is nothing so powerful as truth; and often nothing so strange.
    • Daniel Webster, Arguments on the Murder of Captain White, Volume VI, p. 68.
  • I have ever thought,
    Nature doth nothing so great for great men,
    As when she's pleas'd to make them lords of truth.
    Integrity of life is fame's best friend,
    Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end.
  • It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another to wish sincerely to be on the side of truth.
    • Archbishop Richard Whately, Essay on some of the Difficulties in the Writings of the Apostle Paul, No. 1, On the Love of Truth.
  • The sages say, Dame Truth delights to dwell
    (Strange Mansion!) in the bottom of a well:
    Questions are then the Windlass and the rope
    That pull the grave old Gentlewoman up.
  • Truths that wake
    To perish never.

The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904)

Quotes reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 240-242.
  • Truth is the same in all persuasions.
    • Jefferies, C.J., Titus Oates' Case (1685), 10 How. St. Tr. 1262.
  • Truth and falsehood, it has been well said, are not always opposed to each other like black and white, but oftentimes, and by design, are made to resemble each other so as to be hardly distinguishable; just as the counterfeit thing is counterfeit because it resembles the genuine thing.
    • Cleasby, B., Johnson v. Emerson (1871), L. R. 6 Ex. Ca. 357.
  • There are various kinds of untruth. There is an absolute untruth, an untruth in itself, that no addition or qualification can make true: as, if a man says a thing he saw was black, when it was white, as he remembers and knows. So, as to knowing the truth. A man may know it, and yet it may not be present in his mind at the moment of speaking; or, if the fact is present to his mind, it may not occur to him to be of any use to mention it. For example, suppose a man was asked whether a writing was necessary in a contract for the making and purchase of goods, he might well say "Yes," without adding that payment on receipt of the goods, or part, would suffice. He might well think that the question he was asked was whether a contract for goods to be made required a writing like a contract for goods in existence. If he was writing on the subject, he would, of course, state the exception or qualification.
    • Lord Bramwell, Deny v. Peek (1889), L. R. 14 Ap. Cas. 348.
  • The interests of truth and justice must be allowed to prevail.
    • Erie, C.J., Bartlett v. Lewis (1862), 12 C. B. (N. S.) 249.
  • Truth is the thing that we are enquiring after; and this is the thing we would have prevail, and I hope shall in all cases.
    • Pollexfen, L.C.J., Sir Richard Grahme's Case (1691), 12 How. St. Tr. 799.
  • Ingenuity is one thing, and simple testimony another, and plain truth, I take it, needs no flowers of speech.
  • We live in an age, when truth passes for nothing in the world, and swearing and foreswearing is taken for a thing of course. Had his zeal been half so much for truth as it was for falsehood, it had been a commendable zeal.
    • Jefferies, L.C.J., Case of Braddon and another (1684), 9 How. St. Tr. 1198.
  • Every one disguising the truth from a man who has a right to the truth is wrong, and ought not to be encouraged.
    • Burnett, J., Chesterfield v. Janssen (1750), 2 Ves. 125.
  • God forbid the truth should be concealed any way.
    • Wright, L.C.J., Trial of the Seven Bishops (1688), 12 How. St. Tr. 310.
  • Veritas nihil veretur nisi abscondi: Truth fears nothing but concealment.
    • 9 Co. 20.
  • Fiction is never admitted where truth may work.
    • Hoibart, C.J., Wright v. Gerrard (1617), Lord Hobart's Rep. 311.
  • Ay, ay, let truth come out, in God's name.
    • Jefferies, C.J., Lady Ivy's Case (1684), 10 How. St. Tr. 582.
  • Great is truth, and mighty above all things.
    • 1 Esdras, iv., 41.
  • Plain truth, dear Murray, needs no flowers of speech.
  • It seems to have been supposed, at one time, that saying, 'Tell the truth' meant, in effect, 'Tell a lie.'
    • Willes, J., Reg. v. Reeve and another (1872), L. R. Crown Cas. Res., Vol. 1., 363; in regard to the admissibility of certain evidence of confession
  • Truth, like all other good things, may be loved unwisely — may be pursued too keenly — may cost too much.
    • Knight-Bruce, V.-C, Pearse v. Pearse (1846), 1 De Gex & Sm. 28, 29.
  • We know that passion, prejudice, party, and even good-will, tempt many who preserve a fair character with the world to deviate from truth in the laxity of conversation.
    • Laurence, J., Berkeley Peerage Case (1811), 4 Camp. Rep. 411.

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Quotes reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895).

  • Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail; but in conveying a right impression.
  • How sweet the words of truth breathed from the lips of love!
  • Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this.
  • We must not let go manifest truths because we cannot answer all questions about them.
  • One of the sublimest things in this world is plain truth.
    • Edward Bulwer Lytton, p. 602.
  • The golden beams of truth and the silken cords of love, twisted together, will draw men on with a sweet violence whether they will or not.
  • The deepest truth blooms only from the deepest love.
  • Dare to be true; nothing can need a lie;
    A fault which needs it most grows two thereby.
  • Pray over every truth ; for though the renewed heart is not " desperately wicked," it is quite deceitful enough to become so, if God be forgotten a moment.
  • Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their di- vineness by sick-beds and in every-day work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness.
  • Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does not work in the soul independently of all faculty or qualification there for setting it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion.
  • The advent of truth, like the dawn of day, agitates the elements, while it disperses the gloom.
  • Truth will ever be unpalatable to those who are determined not to relinquish error.
    • E. W. Montagu, p. 604.
  • No truth can be said to be seen as it is until it is seen in its relation to all other truths. In this relation only is it true.
  • He who seeks truth must be content with a lonely, little-trodden path. If he cannot worship her till she has been canonized by the shouts of the multitude, he must take his place with the members of that wretched crowd who shouted for two long hours, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians!" till truth, reason, and calmness were all drowned in noise.
  • There is an inward state of the heart which makes truth credible the moment it is stated. It is credible to some men because of what they are. Love is credible to a loving heart; purity is credible to a pure mind; life is credible to a spirit in which life beats strongly — it is incredible to other men.
  • In all matters of eternal truth, the soul is before the intellect; the things of God are spiritually discerned. You know truth by being true; you recognize God by being like Him.
  • It is perilous to separate thinking rightly from acting rightly. He is already half false who speculates on truth and does not do it. Truth is given, not to be contemplated, but to be done. Life is an action — not a thought. And the penalty paid by him who speculates on truth, is that by degrees the very truth he holds becomes a falsehood.
  • Truth is the most powerful thing in the world, since even fiction itself must be governed by it, and can only please by its resemblance.
  • We must never throw away a bushel of truth because it happens to contain a few grains of chaff.
  • Just as soon as any conviction of important truth becomes central and vital, there comes the desire to utter it—a desire which is immediate and irresistible. Sacrifice is gladness, service is joy, when such an idea becomes a commanding power.
  • Truth does not require your painting, brother; it is itself beauty. Unfold it, and men will be captivated. Take your brush to set off the rainbow, or give a new tinge of splendor to the setting sun, but keep it away from the "Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley."
  • Truth is the shortest and nearest way to our end, carrying us thither in a straight line.
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Last modified on 13 April 2013, at 19:55