quotations about truth
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
ROBERT FROST
"The Black Cottage"
The fact is, all people have a bias of some sort or another. It cannot be helped. All human beings are inculcated with it through their families, friends, culture, education, economic status, and a variety of factors in life. A search for truth is always done by a person, or persons, who are biased in some way. The difficulty for the seeker of authenticity is not to somehow overcome one's biases. The test is when the seeker finds a fact, or data set, that incline against their prejudice. The challenge is to realize that what is real, in any particular case, should prevail over the bias.
D.T. OSBORN
"Truth Is Always on Trial", Liberty Voice, April 14, 2017
The highest knowledge can be nothing more than the shortest and clearest road to truth; all the rest is pretension, not performance, mere verbiage and grandiloquence, from which we can learn nothing.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
The mind's eye is perhaps no better fitted for the full radiance of truth, than is the body's for that of the sun.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
The ultimate arbiter of truth is experiment, not the comfort one derives from one's a priori beliefs, nor the beauty or elegance one ascribes to one's theoretical models.
LAWRENCE M. KRAUSS
A Universe from Nothing
The unclouded eye was better, no matter what it saw.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
There must be repressed truth even in lies.
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ
The Madman and the Nun
Those who pursue the stream of Truth to its sources have much climbing to do, much fatigue to encounter, but they see great sights.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Truth makes all things plain.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
A Midsummer Night's Dream
Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place -- and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all -- so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.
IAIN M. BANKS
Inversions
Upon my word, I think the truth is the hardest missile one can be pelted with.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Veracity is a plant of paradise, and the seeds have never flourished beyond the walls.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Whatever of truth or approximation to truth we have attained, we must hold to it with tenacity and assurance as the truth for us and for the time; must hold to it to live and die by. It seems to me that this fidelity to the conviction of the hour, truth will not dispense with. If a man holds faintly and indecisively to what of truth he has attained, I do not see how he can gain any more beyond. Nevertheless, we must hold it in readiness to give it up the hour that a new or larger truth is revealed. For truth in our minds, our vision of it, is not a finality, but a march. And the moment the word is given, we must strike our tent, without a sigh.
SAMUEL LONGFELLOW
Essays and Sermons
One reason, I verily believe, why many are always learning and never coming to a knowledge of the truth is, that they have no set intent and purpose to use truth--to make it practical and operative.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
CHARLES SIMIC
"Against Winter", Walking the Black Cat
Truth refuses to be subservient to either politics or the market.
GAO XINGJIAN
"Literature as Testimony: The Search for Truth", Witness Literature: Proceedings of the Nobel Centennial Symposium
Truth, as ever, avoids the stranger.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
City of Illusions
Let us not expect men to see truth before it is shown them; they do not see it afterwards.
FULKE GREVILLE
Maxims, Characters, and Reflections
Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
Sohrab and Rustum