Quotes on Truth

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

The truth is that there is no actual stress or anxiety in the world; it's your thoughts that create these false beliefs. You can't package stress, touch it, or see it. There are only people engaged in stressful thinking.

For scholarship - if it is to be scholarship - requires, in addition to liberty, that the truth take precedence over all sectarian interests, including self-interest.

The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules, but to win.

Drug reformers need to be hyper-vigilant. I understand that when you've been oppressed so long, so thirsty for truth, that when someone comes along and gives you a sip of water, you think that they're the savior. But in that water there may be cyanide.

We all have the same God, we just serve him differently. Rivers, lakes, ponds, streams, oceans all have different names, but they all contain water. So do religions have different names, and they all contain truth, expressed in different ways forms and times. It doesn't matter whether you're a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew. When you believe in God, you should believe that all people are part of one family. If you love God, you can't love only some of his children.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.

I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

The kinds of truth that art gives us many, many times are small truths. They don't have the resonance of an encyclical from the Pope stating an eternal truth, but they partake of the quality of eternity. There is a sort of timeless delight in them.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

Something greater than wealth, grander even than fame — that manhood, character, stand for success, and that nothing else really does.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.

In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.

The harsh truth is that 'respectability' is the exorbitant tax we African Americans are forced to pay daily as we try to live out our versions of the American Dream.

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

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector. It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement, with reality.

Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it.