Truth is absolute, truth is supreme, truth is never disposable in a national political life. John W Howard, former Australian prime minister
We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth. Sydney Schanberg, former New York Times reporter
While the grail of truth may not be entirely attainable, without the idea of it, without the obligation to seek it very intensely and very seriously, one would be in a rudderless world. Christopher Hitchens v Peter Hitchens, debate 2008
The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. James A Garfield
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
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. Abraham Lincoln
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is. Winston Churchill
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. Marcus Aurelius
‘The truth.’ Dumbledore sighed. ‘It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.’ J K Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you. Stephanie Klein, Straight Up and Dirty: A Memoir
The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it. Flannery O’Connor
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. Pablo Picasso
Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people. Virginia Woolf
A truth that’s told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
The only truth is music. Jack Kerouac
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer. Ernest Hemingway
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. Malcolm X
Truth is on the side of the oppressed. Malcolm X
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. Malcolm X
Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth. William Faulkner
Truth is stranger than fiction. Early 19th century proverb
Truth will out. Mid-15th century proverb
It is an occupational hazard that anyone who has spent her life learning how to lie eventually becomes bad at telling the truth. Ally Carter, Heist Society
Whatever satisfies the soul is truth. Walt Whitman
Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised or a little mistaken. Jane Austen, Emma
Man is always prey to his truths. Once he has admitted them, he cannot free himself from them. Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus & Other Essays
Seeking what is true is not seeking what is desirable. ibid.
One sometimes sees more clearly in the man who lies than in the man who tells the truth. Truth, like the light, blinds. Lying, on the other hand, is a beautiful twilight, which gives to each object its value. Albert Camus, attributed
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. Soren Kierkegaard
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth. Niels Bohr
Most men would rather deny a hard truth than face it. George R R Martin, A Game of Thrones
Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time. Benjamin Disraeli
The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think. Aristotle
Beauty is truth, truth beauty, – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn
You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you’re with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It’s getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That’s how we know we’re alive: we’re wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that – well, lucky you. Philip Roth, American Pastoral
You can no more make someone tell the truth than you can force someone to love you. Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things. Rene Descartes
When it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable. Rene Descartes
I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain. Rene Descartes
The good thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Faith – acceptance of which we imagine to be true, that which we cannot prove. Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code