Truth is that which is in accord with reality, fact, and experience, that which is authentic. Truth can include facts, and truth can include a coherence with experience. The word in English derives from an older word similar to that meaning faithful (truth is that which is faithful to reality or experience), and ultimately is derived from a root meaning tree. To be truthful is to be as straight and strong as a tree. Other languages have words for truth (veritas, pravda, etc.) that have different derivations.
These quotations explore aspects of truth and truth-telling.
Great learning and superior abilities … will be of little value and small estimation unless virtue, honor, truth, and integrity are added to them.
It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words: ‘And this, too, shall pass away.’
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four; calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
In war, truth is the first casualty.
It is the human condition to question one god after another, one appearance after another, or better, one apparition after another, always pursuing the truth of the imagination, which is not the same as the truth of appearance.
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs.
Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth.
[M]y consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated.
The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you’re going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.
Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
To free a man from error is to give, not take away.
One falsehood spoils a thousand truths.
My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. But for every real word spoken, for every attempt I had ever made to speak those truths for which I am still seeking, I had made contact with other women while we examined the words to fit a world in which we all believed, bridging our differences.
Among us, on the other hand, ‘the righteous man lives by faith.’ Now, if you take away positive affirmation, you take away faith, for without positive affirmation nothing is believed. And there are truths about things unseen, and unless they are believed, we cannot attain to the happy life, which is nothing less than life eternal.
The truth is like a lion. You don’t have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.
The most mischievous liars are those who keep sliding on the verge of truth.
Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.
To be afraid is to behave as if the truth were not true.
The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling.
Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.
