Selected truth quotes

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

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

3. If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview.

4. Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.

5. Maybe the Dalai Lama is the only person who is totally honest, and even with him, he's skillful not to hurt anybody. He's skillful.

6. I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

7. Hope lies to mortals And most believe her, But man's deceiver Was never mine.

8. People who don't know anything tend to make up fake rules, the real rules being considerably more difficult to learn.

9. A consensus means that everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes individually.

10. I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him.

11. I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

12. If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

13. No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

14. The only person who is a worse liar than a faith healer is his patient.

15. But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. 'Might makes right,' and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.

16. There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.

17. Truth is a new word in Europe (and elsewhere).

18. It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.

19. Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

20. I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.

21. The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

22. Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

23. There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.

24. The important thing isn't the soundness or otherwise of the argument, but for it to make you think.

25. I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.

26. When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

27. Truth is what stands the test of experience.

28. I don't believe in mathematics.

29. If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

30. Measured objectively, what a man can wrest from Truth by passionate striving is utterly infinitesimal. But the striving frees us from the bonds of the self and makes us comrades of those who are the best and the greatest.

31. The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

32. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

33. Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

34. I don't think that we necessarily lie. I mean, we make our living by pretending that we're someone else. I don't tell tall tales. I always tell the truth.

35. The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.

36. Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.

37. Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it.

38. Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

39. Whores are the most honest girls. They present the bill right away.

40. Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.

41. I wanted readers to be genuinely unsure as to whether she's telling the truth or lying. It meant making her partly sympathetic, and partly unsympathetic, which wasn't easy.

42. Let me tell you the truth. The truth is, what is. And what should be is a fantasy, a terrible terrible lie that someone gave to the people long ago.

43. If white America told the truth for one day, its whole world would fall apart.

44. Lenny Bruce's legacy is freedom of speech and telling it as it is, getting your life and putting it out on the table, telling everyone about it.

45. Lenny Bruce, declares a truce and plays his other hand. Marshall McLuhan, casual viewin', head buried in the sand.

46. The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.

47. [W]e believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.

48. It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.

49. It was only when you walked away I saw you had the perfect ass. Forgive me for not falling in love with your face or your conversation.

50. People used to say my music was too difficult or too obscure, and I never set out to be difficult or obscure. I just set out to write what I felt as honestly as I could, and I am delighted when other people feel a part of themselves in the music.

51. No one says naked like Leonard Cohen.

52. When I first toured with Wings things that were said about me were true - I did sing out of tune.

53. Science brings men nearer to God.

54. Anyone who tells a lie has not a pure heart, and cannot make a good soup.

55. Music is........ a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

56. It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true. (4.442)

57. A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.) (4.464)

58. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)

59. The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know. (p. 45)

60. 94. But I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

61. 205. If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

62. 206. If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say 'yes' to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say 'I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same.'

63. If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself? (p. 24e)

64. Kierkegaard writes: If Christianity were so easy and cozy, why should God in his Scriptures have set Heaven and Earth in motion and threatened eternal punishments? - Question: But then in that case why is this Scriptures so unclear? (p. 31e)

65. Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself. (p. 34e)

66. To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth. (p. 119)

67. Every explanation is after all an hypothesis. (p. 123)

68. A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can. (p. 123)

69. For I am a bear of very little brain and long words bother me.

70. If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

71. If there were a verb meaning 'to believe falsely,' it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

72. One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.

73. Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

74. The logic of the world is prior to all truth and falsehood.

75. Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.

76. Wir sein pettler. Hoc est verum.

77. By God's grace, I know Satan very well. If Satan can turn God's Word upside down and pervert the Scriptures, what will he do with my words -- or the words of others?

78. Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

79. I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake.

80. In science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality.

81. People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children.

82. Mary McCarthy was a rara avis, a rare bird: a truly sexy intellectual who was nonetheless more interested in truth than in being intellectually sexy or fashionable. ... The real beauty of her life and work is that she was an explorer who never compromised her freedom or integrity. Her writing was symptomatic of this. It never quite became an end in itself, but remained, throughout her life, a means to articulating herself as 'her own woman'. In that she succeeded marvellously and it is the way in which she did it for which she deserves lasting respect and emulation.

83. None is so deaf as those that will not hear.

84. Je veux qu'on me voit en ma facon simple, naturelle, et ordinaire, sans etude et artifice; car c'est moi que je peins...Je suis moi-meme la matiere de mon livre.

85. I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

86. Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.

87. Quelle verite que ces montagnes bornent, qui est mensonge qui se tient au dela?

88. A man may be humble through vainglory.

89. I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old.

90. For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.

91. He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

92. He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying.

93. How many things we held yesterday as articles of faith which today we tell as fables.

94. I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

95. In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

96. Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.

97. The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

98. There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school.

99. La verdadera ciencia ensena, por encima de todo, a dudar y a ser ignorante.

100. Contra los valores afectivos no valen razones, porque las razones no son nada mas que razones, es decir, ni siquiera verdad.