TRUTH QUOTES XVII

quotations about truth

No combatants are so unequally matched as when one is shackled with error, while the other rejoices in the self-demonstrability of truth.

HORACE MANN

Thoughts

Tags: Horace Mann


I tried to put a bird in a cage.
O fool that I am!
For the bird was Truth.
Sing merrily, Truth: I tried to put
Truth in a cage!

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

The Fool's Song

Tags: William Carlos Williams


How sweet is truth to the understanding! And, when spoken in a language every word of which is familiar, how harmonious it sounds to the ear by which the sentiments find their way to the heart!

HOSEA BALLOU

A Series of Letters in Defense of Divine Revelation

Tags: Hosea Ballou


Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured, but, like the sun, only for a time.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought

Tags: Christian Nestell Bovee


Truth is always new, therefore timeless. What was truth yesterday is not truth today, what Truth is truth today is not truth tomorrow: truth has no continuity. It is the mind which wants to make the experience which it calls truth continuous, and such a mind shall not know truth.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

"What was true yesterday is not true today", The New Indian Express, March 2, 2017

Tags: Jiddu Krishnamurti


Trump's relationship to the truth seems novel, if only because he doesn't try to hide his relativism. For Trump, truth is always more about how people feel than what may be empirically verifiable. Trump admits as much in The Art of the Deal, where he describes his sales strategy as "truthful hyperbole." For Trump, facts are fragile, and truth is flexible. Trump probably doesn't spend evenings poring over Foucault's The Archaeology of Knowledge -- but the parallels between Trump's attacks on accepted knowledge and critical philosophy's insistence that we interrogate truth claims suggest that not all assaults on the authority of facts are revolutionary.

CASEY WILLIAMS

"Creating Truth is Assertion of Power", Asharq Al-Awsat, April 19, 2017


The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

REBECCA WEST

The Meaning of Treason

Tags: Rebecca West


If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!

WASHINGTON ALLSTON

Lectures on Art and Poems

Tags: Washington Allston


I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try to call on it, just like a lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch.

ANN PATCHETT

Truth and Beauty

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Each man has in him the potential to realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others to realize it.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

In Quest of Democracy

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Although the truth is not always pleasant, the truth is always a gift because it offers the recipient of that information the chance to change the outcome.

DENISE RESTAURI

"Four Words That Give This CEO The Courage To Take On The Beauty Industry", Forbes, December 8, 2016


Were truth our uttered language, Angels might talk with men.

GERALD MASSEY

"The World is Full of Beauty"

Tags: Gerald Massey


Truth travels slowly and gets weaker as it goes. Suitable lies are strong and run faster.

ARIANA FRANKLIN

Mistress of the Art of Death

Tags: Ariana Franklin


Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

"University Education", Fact and Fiction

Tags: Bertrand Russell


They frequently find the truth who do not seek it, they who do, frequently lose it.

FANNY KEMBLE

Further Records, February 8, 1875

Tags: Fanny Kemble


The strict conservative says that truth is in danger. It is the idlest fear in the world. It plainly indicates no intimacy with the truth. He who has communed with great principles knows that they are everlasting, and that nothing can shake them from their orbits. He is willing to trust truth in every encounter, knowing it to be eternal and omnipotent.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


The demands of Truth are severe; she has no sympathy with the myrtles. All that which is so indispensable in Song is precisely all that with which she has nothing whatever to do. It is but making her a flaunting paradox to wreathe her in gems and flowers. In enforcing a truth we need severity rather than efflorescence of language. We must be simple, precise, terse. We must be cool, calm, unimpassioned. In a word, we must be in that mood, which, as nearly as possible, is the exact converse of the poetical. He must be blind, indeed, who does not perceive the radical and chasmal differences between the truthful and the poetical modes of inculcation. He must be theory-mad beyond redemption who, in spite of these differences, shall still persist in attempting to reconcile the obstinate oils and waters of Poetry and Truth.

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Poetic Principle"

Tags: Edgar Allan Poe


The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.

ROBINSON JEFFERS

"Be Angry at the Sun"

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Spurn not at seeming error, but dig below its surface for the truth;
And beware of seeming truths that grow on the roots of error.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

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It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.

JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

Think on These Things

Tags: Jiddu Krishnamurti