Word Gems: Truth Quotes

In the end, we return to the question, just how much do you love truth?

Do you really love truth or are you just curious? Do you love it enough to rebuild your understanding to conform to a reality that doesn't fit your current beliefs, and doesn't feel 120% happy?

Do you love truth enough to continue seeking even when it hurts, when it reveals aspects of yourself (or human society, or the universe) that are shocking, complex and disturbing, or humbling, glorious and amazing - or even, when truth is far beyond human mind itself?

Scott Mandelker

Winston Churchill: "You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. Yet in their hearts there is unspoken - unspeakable! - fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts! Words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home, all the more powerful because they are forbidden. These terrify them. A little mouse - a little tiny mouse! - of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic."

William James, Pragmatism, 1907: "All the great single-word answers to the world's riddle, such as God, the One, Reason, Law, Spirit, Matter, Nature, Polarity, the Dialectic Process, the Idea, the Self, the Oversoul, draw the admiration that men have lavished on them from this oracular role. By amateurs in philosophy and professionals alike, the universe is represented as a queer sort of petrified sphinx whose appeal to man consists in a monotonous challenge to his divining powers. THE Truth: what a perfect idol of the rationalistic mind!"

John Milton, Areopagitica: "For books are not absolutely dead things, but... do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them... who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills Reason itself, kills the Image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the Earth; but a good Book is the precious life-blood of a master- spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life."

George Orwell, 1984: "Only the disciplined mind can see reality, Winston. You believe that reality is something objective, external, existing in its own right ... self-evident... But ... reality is not external. Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes; only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth. It is impossible to see reality except by looking through the eyes of the Party. This is the fact that you have got to relearn, Winston... You must humble yourself before you can become sane."

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis: "A little sunlight is the best disinfectant.

John 1:5: The Life-Light blazed out of the darkness; the darkness could not put it out (The Message translation). Commentators point out that the flame of a single candle begins to defeat darkness, and increasingly so with each incremental addition of candlepower. But darkness has no such corresponding power over light. Someone has said that it’s not strictly true that light and darkness are opposites, implying that they are co-equals in power. Light is something substantive; darkness is merely the absence of light. Darkness must begin to flee before the smallest encroachment of light, but darkness has not the least such power over light.

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

Mark Twain: It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

President Ronald Reagan, Jan. 11, 1989, final address to the nation from the Oval Office: "[During the last eight years] I won a nickname, 'the Great Communicator.' But I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference. It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator. But I communicated great things - and they didn't spring full bloom from my brow; they came from ... our wisdom and our belief in the principles that have guided us for two centuries."

Rilke, a letter to a friend, Dresden University: "Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek for the answers that cannot be given. For you wouldn't be able to live with them. And the point is to live everything, live the questions now, and perhaps without knowing it, you will live along, some day, into the answers."

Antoine de Saint-Exupery: "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

Giordano Bruno (1548-1600); burned alive by the Church: "It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."

Tolstoy: "I know that most men...can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabrics of their lives."

Helen Keller: "Many people know so little about what is beyond their short range of experience. They look within themselves--and find nothing! Therefore they conclude that there is nothing outside themselves either."

A paradox is not a conflict with reality. It is a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality should be like.

Tsao Hsueh-chin: "When the unreal is taken for the real, the real becomes unreal."

Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is the recognition that no single person, no single authority of government has a monopoly on the truth, but that every individual life is infinitely precious, that every one of us put on this world has been put there for a reason and has something to offer.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Voltaire: "No culture has a monopoly on beauty, just as no religion has a monopoly on truth."

Harry S Truman (1884-1972): "I never give them hell; I just tell them the truth and they think it is hell."

H. L. Mencken: "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."

John Milton: "Truth ... never comes into the world but like a Bastard, to the ignominy of him that brought her forth."

Ludwig von Mises: "The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it."

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne: "If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field."

Charles Peguy: "The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful to truth must make himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable renascent errors."

Max Planck: "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die out, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."

Henry David Thoreau: "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth... Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe...till we come to the hard bottom of rocks in place, which we can call reality."

W. H. Auden: "The most important truths are likely to be those which...society at that time least wants to hear."

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

Erich Fromm: "Historically...those who told the truth about a particular regime have been exiled, jailed, or killed by those in power whose fury has been aroused. To be sure, the obvious explanation is that they were dangerous to their respective establishments, and that killing them seemed the best way to protect the status quo. This is true enough, but it does not explain the fact that the truth-sayers are so deeply hated even when they do not constitute a real threat to the established order. The reason lies, I believe, in that by speaking the truth they mobilize the [psychological] resistance of those who repress it. To the latter, the truth is dangerous not only because it can threaten their power but because it shakes their whole conscious system of orientation, deprives them of their rationalizations, and might even force them to act differently. Only those who have experienced the process of becoming aware of important impulses that were repressed know the earthquake-like sense of bewilderment and confusion that occurs as a result. Not all people are willing to risk this adventure, least of all those people who profit, at least for the moment, from being blind."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: "The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth."

Eric Hoffer: "To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth. Though it is held before our eyes, pushed under our noses, rammed down our throats - we know it not."

Albert Einstein: "The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives... The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed... When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than any talent for abstract, positive thinking."

Dr. Mortimer Adler, Syntopicon essay, Truth: "But the ancient controversy in which Socrates engages with the sophists of his day, who were willing to regard as true whatever anyone wished to think, seems to differ not at all from Freud's quarrel with those whom he calls intellectual nihilists. They are the persons who say there is no such thing as truth or that it is only the product of our own needs and desires. They make it 'absolutely immaterial,' Freud writes, 'what views we accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a right to accuse anyone else of error.' ... If all opinions are equally true or false, then why, Aristotle asks, does not the denier of truth walk 'into a well or over a precipice' instead of avoiding such things. 'If it were really a matter of indifference what we believed,' Freud similarly argues, 'then we might just as well build our bridges of cardboard as of stone, or inject a tenth of a gramme of morphia into a patient instead of a hundredth, or take tear-gas as a narcotic instead of ether. But,' he adds, 'the intellectual anarchists themselves would strongly repudiate such practical applications of their theory.'"

Josh Billings, Affurisms from Josh Billings: His Sayings, 1865: "As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand."

Thomas Mann, Essay on Freud: "A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth."

Albert Einstein: "The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth."

The Apostle John: "This then is the message which we have heard of him ... God is light and in him is no darkness at all." [Editor's note: John asserts this within the context of combating the Gnostic heresy, one which proclaimed that certain gurus had special knowledge of God, obtainable only through them, of course. God is Light; that is, by nature, God is self-revealing; that it is his whole desire to reveal himself and all truth to us. In fact, the universe has been so constructed as to reveal all answers. So why are we still so much in the dark if this is so? God, ever gracious, always respectful of our freedom to choose, force-feeds no one. The above Buddhist proverb says it all.]

Emile Zola: "When truth is buried underground, it grows, it chokes, it gathers such an explosive force that on the day it bursts out, it blows up everything with it."

Charles Van Doren, speaking at a memorial service for Mortimer Adler, 2001: "I remember the first seminar we led together, nearly forty years ago. The text was Plato's dialogue, The Sophist. I had read it twice or three times and struggled to get the point. It could not be what it seemed to be. But Mortimer helped us all to understand it was: The true sophist, Plato is saying, cannot be trapped -- if he is willing to say anything whatsoever to win the argument. If he wants to win at all costs and does not care what is true, and if he is adept at fending off the truth when it is presented, the sophist will triumph, and you will fail ."

Melvin Morse, M.D., Transformed By The Light: "[Regarding paranormal research] I also think that the level of proof we are required to present is irrationally high. Most of our modern medical and scientific advances are based on scientific data far less documented than the eyewitness and independently verified stories we hear in our research. For example, most of our infant feeding practices are based on statistically suspect or anecdotal studies. Most people believe in the existence of infant colic, yet it is difficult to find any consensus in the medical literature on what it is and how to treat it. Even the value of having a low serum cholesterol, something almost completely accepted by the public, is the subject of debate in scientific circles. Despite the controversy, we build guidelines to live by from these accepted 'facts.' Why? Simply because the principles we follow work most of the time and don't really change our world view. We feed babies a certain way, treat them for something we can only loosely define as colic, and keep our cholesterol levels low even if the why is not scientifically nailed down. We do this because, frankly, these rules do not interfere too much with our lives. Since there is so much documentation to back up these shared experiences, why are they and other spiritual experiences not generally accepted as being true? I think the answer is quite simple. Believing in them would radically change our world view, challenging everything from natural laws to spiritual beliefs."

Brian Josephson, Times Higher Education Supplement, 12 Aug. 1994: "For the last six weeks, BBC2 TV has been running a series called Heretic, detailing the responses of the scientific community to ideas generally considered unacceptable by scientists, and the treatment given to those advocating such ideas... In every case a similar story unfolded: dismissal of the claims as being nonsense or impossible, generally without any serious attempt to look at the evidence or the arguments; the non-materialisation of the honours, promotions, invitations to give public lectures and so on that such individuals might have been expected to receive given their past achievements; violent attacks by other scientists; and, for some, demotion or withdrawal of research facilities."

Herbert Puryear, The Edgar Cayce Primer: "Nothing hinders us more than saying one thing and doing another. Yet all of us know more of what constitutes a 'better way' in many aspects of our life than we are willing to apply. There is a quality within us which deters us from doing our best. If we could identify, and confront that quality, accept responsibility for it and not project it upon others, we would take a great step toward our own better well-being. All that is asked of any of us as souls is that we do what we presently know to do. When we do what we know to do, the next step is already given. There is a saying from the East that when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. This often is taken to mean that a person will appear as a master; however, another way of understanding this truth is that when we bring ourselves to the point of being truly ready to learn, the learning experience needed will be forthcoming. We may think of ourselves as being ready to learn only insofar as we are applying what we already know."

Herbert Puryear, The Edgar Cayce Primer: "Edgar Cayce encouraged comparative study. He frequently stated that we learn by comparing different points of view, for 'No finite mind can hold all the truth.' As he suggests, our fellowmen are always going to have experiences, awarenesses, and therefore viewpoints different from our own. If we can listen to each other and share our experiences, we have a chance to broaden our insights."

Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth: "What is the truth? ... Truth is eternal and unchangeable. We who are finite and subject to change can only appreciate it little by little. Truth is always the same, but as we change and advance mentally we can grasp it better. Until we are mentally developed, truth will not be fully comprehended, but, as we evolve, it slowly becomes clearer. Often in ignorance we mistake for truth what is error, and the history of man is the history of error gradually giving place to truth."

Arthur Findlay, The Rock of Truth: "Next best to finding the truth is to search for it, and to do so all should question and reason, as these are the guide posts scattered on the winding road that leads to truth. Truth loves discussion, and the doubting questioning mind of the investigator which creates intelligence, candour, honesty, sympathy and charity for all. Truth is the enemy of ignorance, prejudice, egotism, bigotry and hypocrisy. The one lives by day, the others by night. Let us each, therefore, be a torch-bearer of the truth and always strive for light, more light. We now realise that all past mistakes just taught mankind to reach the road of truth. We pity the follies of the past but understand them. We admire the achievements of the past and should try to emulate them. All the past errors and mistakes of man, with their consequent sufferings and cruelties, were caused by the stones of ignorance, over which he stumbled, on the road that leads to perfection. As a result his next steps were taken with greater thought."

Confucious: "Three things cannot long be hidden the sun, the moon, and the truth."

Albert Schweitzer: "Truth has not special time of its own. Its hour is now - always and, indeed, then most truly when it seems unsuitable to actual circumstances."

Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

Boris Pasternak: "What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."

Malcolm X: "I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against."

Spinoza: "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."

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

Will Rogers: "Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off."

Dr. Gary E. Schwartz, U. of Arizona, The AfterLife Experiments: "Data can be stranger than fiction. Are you ready for the data? As Carl Sagan wrote in 'Contact,' Do you wanna take a ride? ... I was trained to look at the world as an intellectual, a scientist. In science we hypothesize; we do not believe. And science does not establish 'proof' so much as provide evidence for or against a hypothesis."

Thomas Jefferson: "I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led."

Benjamin Disraeli: "Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth."

Leslie Weatherhead: “[The poet] is not sure of a truth because he has proved it [by logical argument], but because he has seen it. Indeed, in some moments of rapture he has experienced it... Aristotle, in the Poetics, believed poetry to be inspired, and to imply either a strain of madness or a happy gift of nature; and he divides poetry into the ecstatic [a "standing out" of oneself] and the euplastic [easily or commonly formed]. It is the ecstatic poet [who] requires explanation. The poet, inspired by some vivid experience, goes into a kind of trance -- we think the phrase is not too strong -- and thereupon sees a vision which he expresses in poetical ideas, that those who read may have that experience re-created in them... It is because of this different way of arriving at truth, we think, that the poet has so often led the way in expressing ideas which are among the most profound [and] cherished by mankind. On the wings of vision the poet soars to a pinnacle of truth... It may be that the poet's creation ... may point to some as yet unrealized desire of humanity, for which the poet, as a prophet of the race, yearns. So, Shelley says ... They are the dreams of what ought to be, or may be."

Thomas Jefferson: "No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that men can be governed by reason and truth."

Albert Einstein: "Nature conceals her secrets because she is sublime, not because she is a trickster."

Kenneth Wapnick: "The shared content of all inspired works is the desire to express what is true for their authors, regardless of the form of artistic expression in which it comes."

Eugene L’Hote: "Honesty isn’t a policy at all; it’s a state of mind or it isn’t honesty."

Henry David Thoreau, Walden: "Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board."

Albert Einstein: "Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

John Adams: "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."

J. Scott Turner: "Academe is full of wrongheaded ideas, and has always been --not because academe itself is wrongheaded, but because to discuss such ideas is its very function. Even bad ideas can contain kernels of truth, and it is academe's role to find them. That can be done only in the sunlight and fresh air of normal academic discourse. Expelling an idea [from the discourse] is the surest way to allow falsehood to survive."

I have sworn upon the altar of Almighty God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Thomas Jefferson