Truth quotes

Truth quotes by Albert Einstein

Also about
Trust, Justice, Equality, Beauty, Childhood
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either. In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

Truth quotes by Ayn Rand

Also about
Reward, Philosophy, Evil
The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it. There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil.
There are no facts, only interpretations. Friedrich Nietzsche

Truth quotes by George Eliot

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through. Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.

Truth quotes by Francois Voltaire

Also about
Life, Death, Respect, Great, Wisdom
To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth. There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times. I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.
Live truth instead of professing it. Elbert Hubbard

Truth quotes by Abraham Linkoln

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg. There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'

Truth quotes by Pablo Picasso

Also about
Art
Art is a lie that makes us realize truth. If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.
The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself. Eleanor Roosevelt
(also about
Literature)
Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned. John Lennon
I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything. That which can be imagined is as much an approximation to truth as that which can be proved by mathematics. Charles Chaplin
(also about
Belief)

Truth quotes by Ernest Hemingway

Also about
Art, Reality, Death
There's no one thing that is true. They're all true. Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over. Madame, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

Truth quotes by Edgar Allan Poe

Also about
Philosophy, Experience, Reality
Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant. It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial. Invisible things are the only realities.

Truth quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

Also about
God, Violence, Vocation, Peace
There is no god higher than truth. Truth never damages a cause that is just. Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected. The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent. I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Truth quotes by Aristotle

Also about
Lie, Delusion, Consequences
For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first. Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth. The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
I love to doubt as well as know. Dante Alighieri
(also about
Doubt)
It is a predisposition of human nature to consider an unpleasant idea untrue, and then it is easy to find arguments against it. Sigmund Freud
(also about
Humanity)

Truth quotes by Richard Bach

Also about
Simplicity
Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a fake messiah. The simplest things are often the truest.
The meaning of things lies not in the things themselves, but in our attitude towards them. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
(also about
Philosophy)

Truth quotes by George Gordon Byron

Also about
Change, Lie, Fiction
Truth is always strange, stranger than fiction. Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at? And, after all, what is a lie? 'Tis but the truth in masquerade. But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric - and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

Truth quotes by Albert Camus

Also about
Passion, Liberty, Delusion
A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing. Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road. Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.
When we value correct principles, we have truth - a knowledge of things as they are. Stephen Covey
(also about
Principles)
Scientific truth is always paradox, if judged by everyday experience, which catches only the delusive appearance of things. Karl Marx
(also about
Science, Delusion)

Truth quotes by Margaret Thatcher

Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story. Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.
I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. Isaac Newton
(also about
Childhood, Memories)
Every person has the truth in his heart. No matter how complicated his circumstances, no matter how others look at him from the outside, and no matter how deep or shallow the truth dwells in his heart, once his heart is pieced with a crystal needle, the truth will gush forth like a geyser. Che Guevara
Peace if possible, truth at all costs. Martin Luther
(also about
Peace)
There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you. Niccolo Machiavelli
(also about
Trust, Hypocrisy, Servility)
When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. Arthur Conan Doyle
(also about
Logic)

Truth quotes by Anonymous

Also about
Relationships
If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything. The TRUTH: It may not lead you to where you thought you were going, but it will always lead you somewhere better. When ignored, it will eventually show itself. The closeness of your relationships is directly proportional to the degree to which you have revealed the truth about yourself. It can be painful.

Truth quotes by Martin Luther King Jr

Also about
Education, Intelligence, Character, Love, Reality, Law, Punishment
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.
Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty. Stephen King
(also about
Friendship, Love, Duty, Lie)
I love physics because it is about truth, a world determined by principles and laws — no messing around or twisting things like in politics, particularly those in my country. Malala Yousafzai
(also about
Science, Politics, Physics)
Truth only means something when it's hard to admit. Nicholas Sparks

Truth quotes by Charles Darwin

Also about
Hope, Fear, Vanity, Fame
We are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it. What wretched doings come from the ardor of fame; the love of truth alone would never make one man attack another bitterly.
So Mathematical Truth prefers simple words since the language of Truth is itself simple. Tycho Brahe
(also about
Science, Mathematics, Simplicity)
There are sadistic scientists who hurry to hunt down errors instead of establishing the truth. Marie Curie
(also about
Mistakes, Delusion, Scientists)

Truth quotes by Max Planck

Also about
Science, Change, Opposition, Inspiration, Happiness, Success, Motivation, Life, Work
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. It is not the possession of truth, but the success which attends the seeking after it, that enriches the seeker and brings happiness to him. We cannot rest and sit down lest we rust and decay. Health is maintained only through work. And as it is with all life so it is with science. We are always struggling from the relative to the absolute.

Truth quotes by Pope Francis

Also about
Vanity, Misery
An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it's beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth... Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them. Truth, according to the Christian faith, is God's love for us in Jesus Christ. Therefore, truth is a relationship.

Truth quotes by Charles Dickens

Also about
Inspiration, Love, Advice, Delusion, Appearance
I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world. Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.

Truth quotes by George Orwell

Also about
Life, Duty, Propaganda, Delusion, Sanity, Writers, Sincerity, Writing
In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious. For a creative writer possession of the 'truth' is less important than emotional sincerity.
I never was a hippie! I went to India because so many friends like Mia Farrow and the Beatles were going there to discover truth. And so I went and trekked through India by myself, but instead of discovering truth, I wanted to join the Peace Corps. Jane Fonda
(also about
Memories, Search)
But I'm very careful with opinions because I never know what the truth is. When I read what the press says about me, I don't really believe what it says about other people. Carla Bruni
(also about
Delusion, Media, Press)
Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife. Johannes Kepler
(also about
Time)
As in the experimental sciences, truth cannot be distinguished from error as long as firm principles have not been established through the rigorous observation of facts. Louis Pasteur
(also about
Science, Experiment)
I'd say that all nations have contact with the truth, and all religions have admirable people. Jon Voight
(also about
Religion, Nation)

Truth quotes by Buddha

Also about
Wisdom, Mistakes, Life, Failure
Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting. The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.

Truth quotes by Bob Marley

Also about
God, People, Advice, Children, Breeding, Freedom, Song lyrics
I don't stand for black man's side, I don't stand for white man's side, I stand for God's side. Tell the children the truth. The truth is an offense, but not a sin. The truth is an offense but not a sin
Is he who laugh last, children! Is he who win

Is a foolish dog bark at a flying bird
One sheep must learn, children! To respect the shepherd
Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light. George Washington
Half a truth is often a great lie. Benjamin Franklin
(also about
Lie)
Marilyn Monroe wasn't even her real name, Charles Manson isn't his real name, and now, I'm taking that to be my real name. But what's real? You can't find the truth, you just pick the lie you like the best. Marilyn Manson
(also about
Reality, Lie)

Truth quotes by Umberto Eco

Also about
Obsession, Philanthropy, Wisdom, Power, Manipulation, Leadership
Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth. Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
God is simple. Everything else is complex. Do not seek absolute values in the relative world of nature. Paramahansa Yogananda
(also about
Nature, Philosophy, God)
Picasso said, "Art is a lie that tells the truth." What if you just want to tell the truth and not lie about it? Nicolas Cage
(also about
Art, Lie)

Truth quotes by Chuck Palahniuk

Also about
Death, Reality, Honesty, Humour, Music, Problems, Movies
Reality means you live until you die...the real truth is nobody wants reality. Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine. Music is crucial. Beyond no way can I overstress this fact. Let's say you're southbound on the interstate, cruising alone in the middle lane, listening to AM radio. Up alongside comes a tractor trailer of logs or concrete pipe, a tie-down strap breaks, and the load dumps on top of your little sheetmetal ride. Crushed under a world of concrete, you're sandwiched like so much meat salad between layers of steel and glass. In that last, fast flutter of your eyelids, you looking down that long tunnel toward the bright God Light and your dead grandma walking up to hug you - do you want to be hearing another radio commercial for a mega, clearance, closeout, blow-out liquidation car-stereo sale? Some soap opera, you know, real people pretending to be fake people with made-up problems being watched by real people to forget their real problems.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. Elvis Presley

Truth quotes by Simone de Beauvoir

Also about
Universe, Men, Certainty
Representation of the world, like the world itself, is the work of men; they describe it from their own point of view, which they confuse with the absolute truth. I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me. Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.
I don't want to dig in the truth all of the time. Let me dream. Olivier Martinez
(also about
Dreams)

Truth quotes by Pedro Calderon de la Barca

Also about
Lifesense, Virtue, Purpose, Life, Lie
But whether it be dream or truth, to do well is what matters. If it be truth, for truth's sake. If not, then to gain friends for the time when we awaken. In this treacherous world
Nothing is the truth nor a lie.
Everything depends on the color
Of the crystal through which one sees it
Remember that the truth within yourself will always be greater than the truth found in these pages. These stories are here to guide us—to help us find that truth, not to tell us what it is. Andy Kaufman
(also about
Inspiration, Self)

Truth quotes by Muhammad Ali

Also about
Religion, Wisdom, Analogies, Jokes
Rivers, ponds, lakes and streams - they all have different names, but they all contain water. Just as religions do - they all contain truths. My way of joking is to tell the truth. That's the funniest joke in the world.
With truths of a certain kind, it is not enough to make them appear convincing: one must also make them felt. Of such kind are moral truths. Charles de Montesquieu
(also about
Morality)

Truth quotes by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Also about
Humanity, Philosophy, Hypocrisy, Flattery, Happiness, Reality, Delusion
Talking nonsense is the sole privilege mankind possesses over the other organisms. It's by talking nonsense that one gets to the truth! I talk nonsense, therefore I'm human. Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery. It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise.

Truth quotes by Francis Bacon

Also about
Lie, Time, Authority, Inspiration, Risk, Mistakes, Challenge, Initiative, Action, Confusion
Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible. Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority. Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out. Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion. Science is but an image of the truth. Man prefers to believe what he prefers to be true.
What is really beautiful must always be true. Stendhal
(also about
Beauty)
The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices. Frederick the Great
(also about
Pleasure, Prejudice, Change)

Truth quotes by Virginia Woolf

Also about
Judgement, Individuality, Thinking, Originality, Work, Laziness, Delusion, Perseverance, Authority
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. Mental fight means thinking against the current, not with it. It is our business to puncture gas bags and discover the seeds of truth. It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top. Let a man get up and say, "Behold, this is the truth", and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.

Truth quotes by Thomas Paine

Also about
Religion, Bible, Trust, Church, Lie
That God cannot lie, is no advantage to your argument, because it is no proof that priests can not, or that the Bible does not. It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

Truth quotes by Walter Savage Landor

Also about
Politics, Lie, Argues
Truth, like the juice of the poppy, in small quantities, calms men; in larger, heats and irritates them, and is attended by fatal consequences in excess. In argument, truth always prevails finally; in politics, falsehood always.
She did not know then that the price of allowing false opinions was the gradual loss of one's capacity for forming true ones. Muriel Spark
(also about
Delusion)
I pefer an ugly truth to a pretty lie. If someone is telling me the truth that is when I will give my heart. Shakira
(also about
Trust)

Truth quotes by Joanne Rowling

Also about
Pride, Mistakes, People, Forgiveness, Harry Potter, Belief, Lie
"The truth." Dumbledore sighed. "It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution." Dumbledore says people find it far easier to forgive others for being wrong than being right. It is my belief... that the truth is generally preferable to lies. The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

Truth quotes by Alfred Adler

Also about
Power, Lie, Psychology, Personality, Responsibility
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth. A lie would have no sense unless the truth were felt dangerous. Every therapeutic cure, and still more, any awkward attempt to show the patient the truth, tears him from the cradle of his freedom from responsibility and must therefore reckon with the most vehement resistance.

Truth quotes by Bertolt Brecht

Also about
Life, Books, Reality
Right is its own defense. All the world says: yes we know what's written in the books but now let's see what our eyes tell us.

Truth quotes by Leo Tolstoy

Also about
Wisdom, Simplicity, Great, Lie
There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness and truth. Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold. Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation - it is the one unbreakable diamond.

Truth quotes by Roald Dahl

Also about
Doubt, Advice, Memories, Honesty, Sincerity, Writing
You should never, never doubt something that no one is sure of. When writing about oneself, one must strive to be truthful. Truth is more important than modesty.
Imagination is the queen of truth, and possibility is one of the regions of truth. She is positively akin to infinity. Charles Baudelaire
(also about
Imagination, Infinity, Chance)
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. Jane Austen
(also about
Mystery, Humanity, Pretending)
I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. Allen Ginsberg
When falsehood can look so like the truth, who can assure themselves of certain happiness? Mary Shelley
(also about
Happiness, Optimism, Lie, Obscurity, Certainty)

Truth quotes by Franz Kafka

Also about
Philosophy, Lie, Principles
There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie. Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

Truth quotes by William Blake

Also about
Wisdom, Evil, Lie, Insult, Justice
A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.

Truth quotes by Marcel Proust

Also about
Time, Age, Experience, Change, Inspiration, Challenge, Courage, Fear
Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true. We must never be afraid to go too far, for truth lies beyond.
I got this idea of doing a really serious big work-it would be precisely like a novel, with a single difference: every word of it would be true from beginning to end. Truman Capote
(also about
Writing, Stories)
The only truth is music. Jack Kerouac
(also about
Music)

Truth quotes by Kurt Vonnegut

Also about
God, Jesus, Books, Literature, Reading
If what Jesus said was good, what can it matter whether he was God or not? Only in books do we learn what’s really going on.

Truth quotes by Thomas Mann

Also about
Lie, Honesty, Great
A harmful truth is better than a useful lie. A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

Truth quotes by John Steinbeck

Also about
Philosophy, Sin, Virtue, Beauty, Courage
There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do. There's more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.

Truth quotes by Graham Greene

Also about
Relationships, Lie, Kindness, Writers, Press, Fiction, Journalistics
In human relationships, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths. A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction.
No such thing as a man willing to be honest - that would be like a blind man willing to see. F. Scott Fitzgerald
(also about
Honesty)

Truth quotes by William Faulkner

Also about
Inspiration, Advice, Compassion, Courage, Honesty, Nobility, Lie
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth. And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
Man can embody truth but he cannot know it. William Butler Yeats

Truth quotes by Joseph Conrad

Also about
Jokes, Humour, Satire, Sincerity
A caricature is putting the face of a joke on the body of a truth Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praiseworthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends

Truth quotes by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Also about
Logic
Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water Facts are the enemy of truth.

Truth quotes by Herman Melville

Also about
Words
Truth is in things, and not in words Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges.

Truth quotes by Ralph Ellison

Also about
Lie, Light
These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them that you’re lying, they’ll tell the world even if you prove you’re telling the truth. Because it’s the kind of lie they want to hear … Nothing, storm or flood, must get in the way of our need for light and ever more and brighter light. The truth is the light and light is the truth.
There are many degrees of Probable, some nearer Truth than others, in the determining of which lies the chief exercise of our Judgment. Christiaan Huygens
(also about
Science, Probability, Judgement, Certainty)

Truth quotes by Gustave Flaubert

Also about
Reality, Art, Lie
There is no truth. There is only perception. Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth. Maya Angelou

Truth quotes by Emily Dickinson

Also about
Beauty, Death, Poems
Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it. I died for beauty but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names. Opinion is a fitting thing but truth outlasts the sun - if then we cannot own them both, possess the oldest one.

Truth quotes by Adolf Hitler

Also about
Victory
It is not truth that matters, but victory. The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.

Truth quotes by Pietro Aretino

Also about
Love, Sincerity
If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them. I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.