quotations about truth
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, October 30, 1703
There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.
PHILIP ROTH
The Human Stain
We are not, however, to judge of a truth beforehand by the fruit which we think it will produce. It is the truth which makes free, not any kind of error. It is the truth which sanctifies men, not any kind of falsehood. All truth is safe. All error is dangerous. It is only the truth that the minister is to use. He is never to say, "This is the philosophy that my people are used to and this is the philosophy that I think will do better service, and so, though I do not believe it, I will preach it." Never! It is only the truth he is to use, but he is always to use the truth. Truth is always an instrument.
LYMAN ABBOTT
Seeking After God
A worship of truth can be idolatry if the truth is small enough.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
ANDRE GIDE
So Be It; or, The Chips Are Down
New constellations of truth are daily discovered in the firmament of knowledge, and new stars are daily shining forth in each constellation.
HORACE MANN
Thoughts
You know the truth, the brick-hard, irregular, slithery surface of truth.
PHILIP K. DICK
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Truth makes on the surface of nature no one track of light -- every eye looking on finds its own.
EDWARD BULWER LYTTON
Caxtoniana
There is no religion higher than the truth.
MARK FROST
The List of Seven
There are tides of justice surging to the unknown shores of right;
Stars of truth that seek a setting in the dark, untutored night.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Caelestis"
Where the interests of truth are at actual stake, we ought, perhaps, to sacrifice even that which is our own--if, at least, we are to lay any claim to a philosophic spirit.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Belief in the truth commences with the doubting of all those "truths" we once believed.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
"Truth Will Have No Other Gods Alongside It"
Truth is on the march; nothing can stop it now.
EMILE ZOLA
manifesto, Le Figaro
There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.
FRANCIS BACON
Novum Organum
Truth is death to the portrait painter.
FRANCIS A. DURIVAGE
"The Career of an Artist"
The most effectual method of expelling error, is, not to meet it sword in hand, but gradually to instill great truths, with which it cannot easily coexist.
WILLIAM E. CHANNING
Thoughts
In your admiration for truth do not forget that truth can sometimes be as foul as a lie.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truths that startled the generation in which they were first announced become in the next age the commonplaces of conversation; as the famous airs of operas which thrilled the first audiences come to be played on hand-organs in the streets.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Truth is a chameleon.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Atreides