Truth Quotes

Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.
– Rabindranath Tagore
Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.
– Arthur Miller
Because you're not what I would have you be, I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.
– Madeleine L'Engle
Because no matter what you say in life, the truth will always be the truth. You know when someone is telling the truth, you look in the eyes. I have a tendency to believe people.
– Jean Claude Van Damme
Be calm in arguing for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.
– George Herbert
Bad taste is simply saying the truth before it should be said.
– Mel Brooks
Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.
– Harold Evans
As long as I tell the truth I feel that nobody can touch me.
– Henry Rollins
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
– David Hume
An honest man speaks the truth, though it may give offence a vain man, in order that it may.
– William Hazlitt
Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.
– David Mamet
Always speak the truth, think before you speak, and write it down afterwards.
– Lewis Carroll
Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself.
– David Sedaris
All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true.
– David Herbert Lawrence
All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you're just playing about.
– Nigel Kneale
All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.
– Bruce Lee
Alas! they had been friends in youth but whispering tongues can poison truth.
– Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Ah, well, the truth is always one thing, but in a way it's the other thing, the gossip, that counts. It shows where people's hearts lie.
– Paul Scott
A writer's job is to tell the truth.
– Andy Rooney
A writer should have this little voice inside of you saying, Tell the truth. Reveal a few secrets here.
– Quentin Tarantino
A rusty nail placed near a faithful compass, will sway it from the truth, and wreck the argosy.
– Sir Walter Scott
A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.
– Will Rogers
A priest is he who lives solely in the realm of the invisible, for whom all that is visible has only the truth of an allegory.
– Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel
A lot of journalism wants to have what they call objectivity without them having a commitment to pursuing the truth, but that doesn't work. Objectivity requires belief in and a commitment toward pursuing the truth - having an object outside of our personal point of view.
– Nate Silver
A lot of guys go, 'Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.' I tell 'em, 'I don't know any.' They want me to make one up. I don't make 'em up. I don't even know when I say it. They're the truth. And it is the truth. I don't know.
– Yogi Berra
A liar begins with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.
– William Shenstone
A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.
– Thomas Mann
A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.
– Thomas Mann
A gift of truth is the gift of love.
– David Icke
A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.
– Michael Kinsley
A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.
– Joe Biden
A biblical false prophet was a servant of the devil attempting to lead people away from the truth.
– Walter Martin
Search for the truth. I tell you things and I always ask you to verify what I say. I told you yesterday that there was an attack and a retreat at Saddam's airport.
– Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf
A play is fiction-and fiction is fact distilled into truth.
– Edward Albee
Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
– Edward Albee
I can't help believing that these things that come from the subconscious mind have a sort of truth to them. It may not be a scientific truth, but it's psychological truth.
– Brian Aldiss
The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.
– Shana Alexander
It's better to be hurt by the truth than to gain satisfaction from the lies.
– David Allan
That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were truths and they were all beautiful.
– Sherwood Anderson
A bizarre sensation pervades a relationship of pretense. No truth seems true. A simple morning's greeting and response appear loaded with innuendo and fraught with implications. Each nicety becomes more sterile and each withdrawal more permanent.
– Maya Angelou
An epigram is a flashlight of a truth; a witticism, truth laughing at itself.
– Minna Antrim
The plastic virtues: purity, unity, and truth, keep nature in subjection.
– Guillaume Apollinaire
And therefore the Philosopher [Aristotle] says in Metaphysics VI that good and evil, which are objects of the will, are in things, but truth and error, which are objects of the intellect, are in the mind.
– Saint Thomas Aquinas
Protestantism has the method of Jesus with His secret too much left out of mind; Catholicism has His secret with His method too much left out of mind; neither has His unerring balance, His intuition, His sweet reasonableness. But both have hold of a great truth, and get from it a great power.
– Matthew Arnold
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
– Matthew Arnold
It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.
– Brooks Atkinson
All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
– Richard Avedon
The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.
– Diane Abbott
Every scientific truth goes through three states: first, people say it conflicts with the Bible; next, they say it has been discovered before; lastly, they say they always believed it.
– Jean Louis Agassiz
IAzeris want to know why the Armenian lobby is so influential. What is the U.S. Congress afraid of? Is this lobby stronger than justice or truth or even elementary logic? Is it more important than future gigantic joint projects between Azerbaijan and the United States?
– Ilham Aliyev
The plain truth is that the reporter's trade is for young men. Your feet, which do the legwork, are nine times more important than your head, which fits the facts into a coherent pattern.
– Joseph W. Alsop, Jr.
Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.
– Walter Bagehot
In searching for truth, I would hope that liberals and conservatives could work together. There are certainly areas where presuppositions will affect what questions might be asked and approaches that will be employed, and these are areas where different groups will do their own research and thinking.
– David Baker
Don't get me wrong, there are sometimes if I go and see a really funny comedy, that I wished I had smoked a joint. I'll be honest with you. That's the truth.
– Stephen Baldwin
Many people have the idea that game shows are easy to come up with. And nothing could be further from the truth.
– Bob Barker
Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television's message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth and fresher breath.
– Dave Barry
Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.
– Bernard Baruch
I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.
– Georges Bataille
Terror is as much a part of the concept of truth as runniness is of the concept of jam. We wouldn't like jam if it didn't, by its very nature, ooze. We wouldn't like truth if it wasn't sticky, if, from time to time, it didn't ooze blood.
– Jean Baudrillard
Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.
– Henry Ward Beecher
My mother brought me magicians and witches, because I was very ugly, really revolting. So she thought somebody had put a spell on me - this is the truth - so she made me drink some horrible terrifying potions, for year.
– Roberto Benigni
Nothing is poorer than a truth expressed as it was thought. Committed to writing in such cases, it is not even a bad photograph. Truth wants to be startled abruptly, at one stroke, from her self-immersion, whether by uproar, music or cries for help.
– Walter Benjamin
There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours. To the cognition of the brain must be added the experience of the soul.
– Arnold Bennett
Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterward.
– Georges Bernanos
What does the truth matter? Haven't we mothers all given our sons a taste for lies, lies which from the cradle upwards lull them, reassure them, send them to sleep: lies as soft and warm as a breast!
– Georges Bernanos
But the truth is that critics are by definition critical. That's their job.
– Frank Black
If there is any truth to the old proverb that one who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client, the Court now bestows a constitutional right on one to make a fool of himself.
– Harry A. Blackmun
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
– Eric Blair
When they built this building they were afraid to say that beauty is truth for fear that it wouldn't be by the time it was completed.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The belief that there is only one truth, and that oneself is in possession of it, is the root of all evil in the world.
– Max Born
For the sake of the troops, for the love of the troops, we must not add yet another casualty to this war. We must not let truth be a casualty of this war.
– Barbara Boxer
The American people need to know the truth. The American people need to see the truth. In a democracy, letting the people know the truth is the essence of what it means to be free.
– Barbara Boxer
But I can tell - let truth be told - That love will change in growing old; Though day by day is nought to see, So delicate his motions be.
– Robert Bridges
Scatter the clouds that hide The face of heaven, and show, Where sweet peace doth abide, Where Truth and Beauty grow.
– Robert Bridges
No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does.
– Anita Brookner
I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.
– John Mason Brown
In politics, a lie unanswered becomes truth within 24 hours.
– Willie Brown
I see no truth whatsoever in stories of extraterrestrial visitors, crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, or many of the other mysteries that permeate pop culture.
– Dan Brown
To build the funding of science for the next generation on the basis of the cold war was not well advised. That implied that science wasn't important enough to survive without a cold war. The truth is that science - research and development - is probably the most important factor in the progress of the human race over the last several thousand years.
– George E. Brown, Jr.
A man may be in as just possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.
– Sir Thomas Browne
Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.
– Lenny Bruce
Never question the relevance of truth, but always question the truth of relevance.
– Craig Bruce
Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger.
– William C. Bryant
Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity.
– Buddha
We concluded that tomorrow is a moment of truth for the world. Many nations have voiced a commitment to peace and security, and now they must demonstrate that commitment to peace and security in the only effective way: by supporting the immediate and unconditional disarmament of Saddam Hussein.
– George W. Bush
A Truth is the subjective development of that which is at once both new and universal. New: that which is unforeseen by the order of creation. Universal: that which can interest, rightly, every human individual, according to his pure humanity.
– Alain Badiou
In truth, our leaders and propagandists know very well that liberal capitalism is an inegalitarian regime, unjust, and unacceptable for the vast majority of humanity.
– Alain Badiou
It is necessary to examine, in a detailed way, the contemporary theory of Evil, the ideology of human rights, the concept of democracy. It is necessary to show that nothing there leads in the direction of the real emancipation of humanity. It is necessary to reconstruct rights, in everyday life as in politics, of Truth and of the Good. Our ability to once again have real ideas and real projects depends on it.
– Alain Badiou
The ethics of Truth always returns, in precise circumstances, to fighting for the True against the four fundamentals forms of Evil: obscurantism, commercial academicism, the politics of profit and inequality, and sexual barbarism.
– Alain Badiou
To get rich never risk your health. For it is the truth that health is the wealth of wealth.
– Richard Baker
Our boldness and Christian suffering, they call obstinacy and pertinacity, though half as much, if among themselves, they would account Christian courage, and nobility. And though thus by their envy they strive to read all, relating to us, backwards, counting these things vices in us, which in themselves they would extol as virtues, yet hath the strength of Truth extorted this confession often from them, that we are generally a pure and clean people as to the outward conversation.
– Robert Barclay
Man can certainly keep on lying... but he cannot make truth falsehood. He can certainly rebel... but he can accomplish nothing which abolishes the choice of God.
– Karl Barth
The handout and the spokesman threaten our diligence, our ingenuity, our skepticism, our zeal. For zealots we must be. Not for a cause. For facts and for truth - and all of the truth.
– Frank H. Bartholomew
Some day Love shall claim his own Some day Right ascend his throne, Some day hidden Truth be known; Some day - some sweet day.
– Lewis J. Bates
How sweet the words of Truth, breathed from the lips of Love.
– James Beattie
I think Bush has a very selfish, arrogant point of view. I think he is interested in power, I think he believes his truth is the only truth, and that he will do what he wants to do despite the people.
– Harry Belafonte
The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth.
– Malcolm Bradbury
Without free speech no search for truth is possible... no discovery of truth is useful... Better a thousandfold abuse of free speech than denial of free speech. The abuse dies in a day, but the denial slays the life of the people, and entombs the hope of the race.
– Charles Bradlaugh