Truth Quotes

Belief made no difference to the truth.

~ Diane Duane

My past conduct was so transparent and so honest that when my enemies spread rumours about me nobody believed them.

~ Amit Kalantri

If you want your lie to be believed then you need to speak thousand truths before you lie.

~ Amit Kalantri

Our faith is faith in some one else's faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case. Our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other,--what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

~ William James

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t—whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

~ John Updike

Many ask what difference does it make whether man believes in a God or not.It makes a big difference.It makes all the difference in the world.It is the difference between being right and being wrong; it is the difference between truth and surmises—facts or delusion.It is the difference between the earth being flat, and the earth being round.It is the difference between the earth being the center of the universe, or a tiny speck in this vast and uncharted sea of multitudinous suns and galaxies.It is the difference in the proper concept of life, or conclusions based upon illusion.It is the difference between verified knowledge and the faith of religion.It is a question of Progress or the Dark Ages.

~ Joseph Lewis

The choice to believe is yours. It’s the only thing that truly is.

~ J.s.b. Morse

I guess sometimes the truth just isn't worth believing... Personally, I've always felt that life's too short for truth. I'm just here to be entertained.

~ J. Ross Clara

When story and behavior are consistent, we relax; when story and behavior are inconsistent, we get tense. We have a deep psychological need for our stories and behaviors to be consistent. We need to be able to trust the story, because it's the lens through which we see reality. We will go to great lengths in the attempt to make a story that explains an action and supports or restores consistency. If we cannot make story and action fit, we either have to make a new story or change the action. ... [But] The drive for consistency and the ability to redefine abhorrent action so it fits the story are very complex issues. We have a huge ability to continue believing stories we are told are true in order to stay comfortable with actions we don't want to change, or don't feel capable of changing.

~ Christina Baldwin

Belief in the lie is the life of the lie.

~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The atheist, agnostic, or secularist ... should not be cowed by exaggerated sensitivity to people's religious beliefs and fail to speak vigorously and pointedly when the devout put forth arguments manifestly contrary to all the acquired knowledge of the past two or three millennia. Those who advocate a piece of folly like the theory of an 'intelligent creator' should be held accountable for their folly; they have no right to be offended for being called fools until they establish that they are not in fact fools. Religiously inclined writers like Stephen L Carter may plead that 'respect' should be accorded to religious views in public discourse, but he neglects to demonstrate that those views are worthy of respect. All secularists -- scientists, literary figures, even politicians (if there are any such with the requisite courage) -- should speak out on the issue when the opportunity presents itself.

~ S.t. Joshi

Agnosticism, in fact, is not a creed, but a method, the essence of which lies in the rigorous application of a single principle. That principle is of great antiquity; it is as old as Socrates; as old as the writer who said, 'Try all things, hold fast by that which is good'; it is the foundation of the Reformation, which simply illustrated the axiom that every man should be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, it is the great principle of Descartes; it is the fundamental axiom of modern science. Positively the principle may be expressed: In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable. That I take to be the agnostic position, which if a man keep whole and undefiled, he shall not be ashamed to look the universe in the face, whatever the future may have in store for him.The results of the working out of the agnostic principle will vary according to individual knowledge and capacity, and according to the general condition of science. That which is unproved today may be proved, by the help of new discoveries, tomorrow. The only negative fixed points will be those negations which flow from the demonstrable limitation of our faculties. And the only obligation accepted is to have the mind always open to conviction.That it is wrong for a man to say he is certain of the objective truth of a proposition unless he can provide evidence which logically justifies that certainty. This is what agnosticism asserts and in my opinion, is all that is essential to agnosticism.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley

When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist, or a pantheist; a materialist or an idealist; a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer; until at last I came to the conclusion that I had neither art nor part with any of these denominations, except the last. The one thing in which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure that they had attained a certain 'gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. And, with Hume and Kant on my side, I could not think myself presumptuous in holding fast by that opinion ...So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic'. It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant; and I took the earliest opportunity of parading it at our Society, to show that I, too, had a tail, like the other foxes.

~ Thomas Henry Huxley

The belief that myths are somehow less true than the symbolic dream we call 'reality' may be the greatest myth of all.

~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

The trouble with believing conspiracies is you start seeing them everywhere, right? And everything becomes a part of them. But, of course, the trouble with not believing them is becoming a dupe.

~ J. Ross Clara

For, dear me, why abandon a beliefMerely because it ceases to be true?Cling to it long enough, and not a doubtIt will turn true again, for so it goes.Most of the change we think we see in lifeIs due to truths being in and out of favor.As I sit here, and often times, I wishI could be monarch of a desert landI could devote and dedicate foreverTo the truths we keep coming back and back to.––from The Black Cottage

~ Robert Frost

The stories you believe to be true are the ones your life will become.

~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

The way to embody love completely is to see and appreciate life just as it is, and not as you believe, fear, or desire it to be.

~ Eric Micha'el Leventhal

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. It is a question whether we ought to argue with those who profess themselves ignorant not only about the eternity yet to come but also about their present existence, for they [the Academics] even argue that they do not know what they cannot help knowing. For no one can 'not know' that he himself is alive. If he is not alive, he cannot 'not know' about it or anything else at all, because either to know or to 'not know' implies a living subject. But, in such a case, by not positively affirming that they are alive, the skeptics ward off the appearance of error in themselves, yet they do not make errors simply by showing themselves alive; one cannot err who is not alive. That we live is therefore not only true, but it is altogether certain as well. And there are many things that are thus true and certain concerning which, if we withhold positive assent, this ought not to be regarded as a higher wisdom but actually a sort of dementia.

~ Augustine Of Hippo

[Religious belief is] outmoded and ridiculous. [Belief in gods was a] worn out but once useful crutch in mankind's journey towards truth. We consider the time has come for that crutch to be abandoned.

~ Peter Atkins

I don't give a damn for anybody's opinion, I only care about the facts. So I'm not an enthusiast for diversity of opinion where factual matters are concerned.

~ Richard Dawkins

It is not what happens to you or for you that makes you grateful. It's how you respond to what is happening, that shows your belief about gratitude.

~ Sumner Davenport

What we consider too good to be true, is truth; all else is fallacy

~ Oshetha Shakoor

Love and kindness are the hammer and chisel that gently chip through barriers and long-held beliefs to reveal the magnificent soul contained within every human.

~ Molly Friedenfeld

Keep at it. Persistence does pay dividends. But there is a catch, you gotta believe it before manifestation will validate conviction as [your] truth. And sacrifice is a required path to fulfillment.

~ T.f. Hodge

The modern world is filled with men who hold dogmas so strongly that they do not even know that they are dogmas. It may be said even that the modern world, as a corporate body, holds certain dogmas so strongly that it does not know that they are dogmas. It may be thought 'dogmatic,' for instance, in some circles accounted progressive, to assume the perfection or improvement of man in another world. But it is not thought dogmatic to assume the perfection or improvement of man in this world; though that idea of progress is quite as unproved as the idea of immortality, and from a rationalistic point of view quite as improbable. Progress happens to be one of our dogmas, and a dogma means a thing which is not thought dogmatic.

~ G.k. Chesterton

Truth is not a prerequisite for belief, whilst belief is often times a catalyst for searching for one's own truth.

~ S.r. Bakshi

The great systems that inform the world about the truth and life invariably claim to be absolutely truthful and well-balanced. In reality they are quaking bridges built out of yearning.

~ Peter Høeg

Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

~ Hypatia

One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant.

~ John Locke

Also I didn't habe 20/20 vision whch you needed to be a pilot. But I said you could still want something that is very unlikely to happen.

~ Mark Haddon

I sigh. “But if you’d talked to Jules—if she could hear you . . .” My voice trails off.“Then you wouldn’t feel quite so crazy?” Oliver asks gently. “Can’t you believe in me, if I believe in you?

~ Jodi Picoult

At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.

~ Alasdair Macintyre

You can tell people the truth, but they'll never believe until the event. Until it's too late. In the meantime, the truth will just piss them off and get you in a lot of trouble

~ Chuck Palahniuk

And this shows that sometimes people want to be stupid and they do not want to know the truth.

~ Mark Haddon

The more you believe, the more you doubt. The more you doubt, the more you ask questions. Knowing that questions left unanswered is the best proof for your belief.

~ Sandra Chami Kassis

There is a kind of truth in everything, even fairytales. In fact, especially in fairytales... The King understood it as he looked out from the roof of the Temple and saw the clouds flying past and the green fields far beneath him. He knew that some things are real whether you believe in them or not...(The Thirteenth King)

~ Elizabeth Hopkinson

The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.

~ Oscar Wilde

Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering a critical faculty—or indeed any faculty whatever, unless it is one of induced enthusiasm for a plausible consensus President. (We shall see whether it counts as progress for the same parrots to learn a new word.) And my own cohort, the left, shared in the general dispiriting move towards apolitical, atonal postmodernism. Regarding something magnificent, like the long-overdue and still endangered South African revolution (a jagged fit in the supposedly smooth pattern of axiomatic progress), one could see that Ariadne’s thread had a robust reddish tinge, and that potential citizens had not all deconstructed themselves into Xhosa, Zulu, Cape Coloured or ‘Eurocentric’; had in other words resisted the sectarian lesson that the masters of apartheid tried to teach them. Elsewhere, though, it seemed all at once as if competitive solipsism was the signifier of the ‘radical’; a stress on the salience not even of the individual, but of the trait, and from that atomization into the lump of the category. Surely one thing to be learned from the lapsed totalitarian system was the unwholesome relationship between the cult of the masses and the adoration of the supreme personality. Yet introspective voyaging seemed to coexist with dull group-think wherever one peered about among the formerly ‘committ

~ Christopher Hitchens

Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination, and of the heart.

~ Salman Rushdie