The Concept of Truth: Quote File

'Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.' Hunter S. Thompson 

'I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.' Hunter S. Thompson 

'Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.' Friedrich Nietzsche 

'Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.' Thomas Jefferson 

'Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true.' Marcel Proust 

'Lies are essential to humanity. They are perhaps as important as the pursuit of pleasure and moreover are dictated by that pursuit.' Marcel Proust 

'Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.' Tacitus 

'Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.' Tacitus 

'Liars when they speak the truth are not believed.' Aristotle 

'This truth should be kept constantly in mind by every free people desiring to preserve the sanity and poise indispensable to the permanent success of self-government.' Theodore Roosevelt 

'Great liars are also great magicians.' Adolf Hitler 

'A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.' Isaac Newton 

'Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.' Emily Dickinson 

'Truth is incontrovertible, ignorance can deride it, panic may resent it, malice may destroy it, but there it is.' Winston Churchill 

'In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.' Winston Churchill 

'There are a lot of lies going around...and half of them are true.' Winston Churchill 

'It's not enough to speak, but to speak true.' William Shakespeare 

'I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.' Samuel Goldwyn 

'The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.' Henry Mencken 

'It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.' Henry Mencken 

'Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.' Abraham Lincoln 

'Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.' Mark Twain 

'Most writers regard truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.' Mark Twain 

'The great masses of the people will more easily fall victims to a big lie than to a small one.' Adolf Hitler 

'A man never lies as much as after a hunt, during a war, and before an election.' Otto von Bismarck 

'The reason why truth is so much stranger than fiction is that there is no requirement for it to be consistent.' Mark Twain 

'It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.' Thomas Jefferson 

'You only lie to two people in your life: your girlfriend and the police.' Jack Nicholson 

'False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.' Plato 

'Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.' Edward R. Murrow 

'I never did give them hell. I just told the truth, and they thought it was hell.' Harry Truman 

'This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.' William Shakespeare 

'It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but a matter of what is perceived to be true.' Henry Kissinger 

'There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.' George MacDonald 

'To be trusted is a greater complement than to be loved.' George MacDonald 

'Friends, if we be honest with ourselves, we shall be honest with each other.' George MacDonald 

'Occasionally words must serve to veil the facts. But this must happen in such a way that no one becomes aware of it; or, if it should be noticed, excuses must be at hand, to be produced immediately.' Nicolo Machiavelli 

'Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes by chance.' William Shakespeare 

'Of all the animals, man is the only one that lies.' Mark Twain 

'Lies are usually caused by an undue fear of men.' Nachman of Bratslav 

'Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.' Matthew Arnold 

'One of the striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.' Mark Twain 

'We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.' Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 

'There is nothing so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange.' Daniel Webster 

'The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.' Adolf Hitler 

'If devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of an individual who assumes the responsibility of thinking...the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.' Ayn Rand 

'Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.' George Orwell 

'One deceit needs many others, and so the whole house is built in the air and must soon come to the ground.' Baltasar Gracian 

'A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.' Baltasar Gracian 

'God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please - you can never have both.' Ralph Waldo Emerson 

'The truth is always a trick to those who live among lies.' Author Unknown 

'I'd rather hear an old truth than a new lie.' Chris Bowyer 

'There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily.' George Washington 

'Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened.' Winston Churchill 

'As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.' Josh Billings 

'False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.' Socrates 

'Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.' Oliver Wendell Holmes 

'Don't be 'consistent' but be simply true.' Oliver Wendell Holmes 

'Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.' Margaret Thatcher 

'Of course it's the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.' Margaret Thatcher 

'When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.' Otto von Bismarck 

'It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.' George Bernard Shaw 

'A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.' Winston Churchill 

'There's no one thing that is true. They're all true.' Ernest Hemingway 

'It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.' Thomas Paine 

'But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.' Thomas Paine 

'An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.' Aldous Huxley 

'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.' Aldous Huxley 

'The trust of the innocent is the liar's most useful tool.' Stephen King 

'If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.' Mark Twain 

'The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.' Mark Twain 

'Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.' Mark Twain 

'A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.' Mark Twain 

'Half a truth is often a great lie.' Benjamin Franklin 

'All great truths begin as blasphemies.' George Bernard Shaw 

'The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.' Aristotle 

'Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.' Edmund Burke 

'A bare assertion is not necessarily the naked truth.' George Dennison Prenti 

'The greatest friend of Truth is time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion Humility.' Charles Colton 

'Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.' Robert Frost 

'Great truths can only be forgotten and can never be falsified.' GK Chesterton 

'Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.' GK Chesterton 

'Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.' GK Chesterton

'If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.' C.S. Lewis 

'He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.' Napoleon Bonaparte 

'The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.' Napoleon Bonaparte 

'You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it.' GK Chesterton 

'A lie cannot live.' Martin Luther King Jr