Top 100 Truth Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best truth quotes ever written, picked out of the full truth archive on QuoteForever. You will find Albert Einstein, Benjamin Franklin, Blaise Pascal and Carl Jung among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

The truth of a theory can never be proven, for one never knows if future experience will contradict its conclusions.

2

If what he said was the truth, it broke her heart. If what he said was a lie, it was broken anyway.

3

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

4

Time, whose tooth gnaws away everything else, is powerless against truth.

5

The trouble with too many people is they believe the realm of truth always lies within their vision.

6

The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths. Its province is to assist us to making available what we are already acquainted with.

7

What is enquiry into the Truth? It is the firm conviction that the Self is real, and all, other than That, is unreal.

8

The intricacies of spiritual philosophy and theologies are just a thought within Emptiness.

9

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

10

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

11

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

12

The commandment to refrain from placing blame on our parents, deeply imprinted in us by our upbringing, skillfully performs the function of hiding essential truths from us.

13

ACKNOWLEDGE, v.t. To confess. Acknowledgment of one another's faults is the highest duty imposed by our love of truth.

14

There are truths that shield themselves behind veils, and are best spoken by implication. Even the sun veils himself in his own rays to blind the gaze of the too curious starer.

15

One may gain one truth at the expense of another.

16

No doubt the truth is hard to come by for those who do not like the sound of it - dreams and illusions are so much more pleasant.

17

The face of Truth is not less fair and beautiful for all the counterfeit visors which have been put upon her.

18

Physical scientists probably deserve the reputation they enjoy for incorruptibility and unswerving devotion to pure truth. The reason for this is that it is not worth while to bribe them.

19

Man's passion for truth is such that he will welcome the bitterest of all postulates so long as it strikes him as true.

20

A faith that cannot survive collision with the truth is not worth many regrets.

21

There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact.

22

The ultimate truth is penultimately always a falsehood. He who will be proved right in the end appears to be wrong and harmful before it.

23

There is nothing ugly in art except that which is without character, that is to say, that which offers no outer or inner truth.

24

The profoundest truth of war is that the issue of battle is usually decided in the minds of the opposing commanders, not in the bodies of their men.

25

I have seldom known a person who deserted the truth in trifles and then could be trusted in matters of importance.

26

The cops picked me up for attempted murder. I can still see the detectives, licking their chops. Thought they had me. Two weeks later, the cat came out of a coma and told the truth. I was innocent.

27

You never monkey with the truth.

28

Sometimes it's right to do the wrong things and right now is one of those times.

29

Half the truth is often a great lie.

30

A lie stands on one leg, truth on two.

31

I never know how much of what I say is true.

32

I left in love, in laughter, and in truth, and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.

33

Curious people are intersting people, I wonder why that is.

34

We live in an age where truth really doesn't matter anymore.

35

Those are weaklings who know the truth and uphold it as long as it suits their purpose, and then abandon it.

36

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

37

In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.

38

What a wonderful time to be young. You will see events in your lifetime that will test your courage and extend your faith. If you will face the sunlight of truth, the shadows of discouragement and sin and error will fall behind you. You must never give up!

39

I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It's the truth.

40

We should know what our convictions are, and stand for them. Upon one's own philosophy, conscious or unconscious, depends one's ultimate interpretation of facts. Therefore it is wise to be as clear as possible about one's subjective principles. As the man is, so will be his ultimate truth.

41

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.

42

In natural science the principles of truth ought to be confirmed by observation.

43

A society committed to the search for truth must give protection to, and set a high value upon, the independent and original mind, however angular, however rasping, however socially unpleasant it may be; for it is upon such minds, in large measure, that the effective search for truth depends.

44

Something inside Clary cracked and broke, and words came pouring out. 'What do you want me to tell you? The truth? The truth is that I love Simon like I should love you, and I wish he was my brother and you weren't, but I can't do anything about that and neither can you!

45

A radical is one who speaks the truth.

46

Theories are private property, but truth is common stock.

47

Truth! why shall every wretch of letters Dare to speak truth against his betters! Let ragged virtue stand aloof, Nor mutter accents of reproof; Let ragged wit a mute become, When wealth and power would have her dumb.

48

Pray over every truth; for though the renewed heart is not "desperately wicked," it is quite deceitful enough to become so, if God be forgotten a moment.

49

There is one thing even more vital to science than intelligent methods; and that is, the sincere desire to find out the truth, whatever it may be.

50

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.

51

All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to each question to which they can be applied.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real.

52

One always has the air of someone who is lying when one speaks to a policeman.

53

We are better deceived by having some truth told us than none.

54

I searched through rebellion, drugs, diet, mysticism, religion, intellectualism and much more, only to begin to find that truth is basically simple and feels good, clear and right.

55

Only by letting go can we truly possess what is real.

56

Truth, like the sun, submits to be obscured; but, like the sun, only for a time.

57

Virtue is the fount whence honour springs.

58

My dad don't like lies. He says it hurts people in the long race. He prefers the truth. That hurts them instantly.

59

Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine.

60

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

61

The true worth of an experimenter consists in his pursuing not only what he seeks in his experiment, but also what he did not seek.

62

Hard times arouse an instinctive desire for authenticity.

63

One fool will deny more truth in half an hour than a wise man can prove in seven years.

64

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds

65

Powerful truth has its own gravity and eventually pulls people back to it.

66

Poetry is only secondarily about words. Primarily, it is about truth. I dealt with the Ding an Sich, the substance behind the shadow, weaving powerful concepts, similes, and connections the way an engineer would raise a skyscraper with the whiskered-alloy skeleton being constructed long before the glass and plastic and chromaluminum appears.

67

To fail to properly contextualize content has historically been the basis for the slaughter of millions of people in every century throughout human history. To ignore context is the greatest source of catastrophe for every generation of man, and it continutes on in the present time with the same catastrophic consequences. There is no greater lesson that needs to be learned to reduce human suffering and bring ignorance to an end.

68

Always tell the truth - it's the easiest thing to remember.

69

Seek truth from facts.

70

Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose.

71

Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way.

72

Guru Arjun tells us that the truth we seek is within ourselves, and I agree. The answers to many of our greatest desires, needs, and longings are inside. We only need to know how to retrieve them. The most powerful vehicle for retrieving our longed for answers is applied intelligence, which is the combination of information and experience. Applied intelligence brings true wisdom because it includes experience, usually on a deep level.

73

No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs - the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then - face the world.

74

There are thousands upon thousands of students who have practiced meditation and obtained its fruits. Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method. If you can not find the truth right where you are, where else do you expect to find it?

75

There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.

76

We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.

77

Enormous numbers of people are taken in, or at least beguiled and fascinated, by what seems to me to be unbelievable hocum, and relatively few are concerned with or thrilled by the astounding-yet true-facts of science, as put forth in the pages of, say, Scientific American.

78

I would proclaim that the vast majority of what [say, Scientific American] is true-yet my ability to defend such a claim is weaker than I would like. And most likely the readers, authors, and editors of that magazine would be equally hard pressed to come up with cogent, non-technical arguments convincing a skeptic of this point, especially if pitted against a clever lawyer arguing the contrary. How come Truth is such a slippery beast?

79

Everybody talks and everybody listens, and somehow the truth just always comes up missin.

80

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

81

The photograph is married to the eye, Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth.

82

When you hate someone you used to love, and you think he's done something awful - he probably has.

83

If history and science have taught us anything, it is that passion and desire are not the same as truth.

84

The Truth is far more all-encompassing than the mind could ever comprehend. No thought can encapsulate the Truth. At best, it can point to it. For example, it can say: "All things are intrinsically one (The Pearl of Great Price)." That is a pointer, not an explanation. Understanding these words means feeling deep within you the truth to which they point.

85

The greater amount of truth is impulsively uttered; thus the greater amount is spoken, not written.

86

The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.

87

There is no truth. Only points of view.

88

Falsehood and delusion are allowed in no case whatever; but, as in the exercise of all the virtues, there is an economy of truth. It is a sort of temperance, by which a man speaks truth with measure, that he may speak it the longer.

89

The excellence and inspiration of truth is in the pursuit, not in the mere having of it. The pursuit of all truth is a kind of gymnastics; a man swings from one truth with higher strength to gain another. The continual glory is the possibility opening before us.

90

Truth cannot be defeated.

91

Here is the Truth in a little creed, Enough for all the roads we go: In Love is all the law we need, In Christ is all the God we know.

92

Add a few drops of venom to a half truth and you have an absolute truth.

93

The paintings in our galleries are seen one day in bright sunshine and another day in the dim light of a rainy afternoon, yet they remain the same paintings, ever faithful, ever convincing. To a marvelous extent they carry their own light within. For their truth is not that of a perfect replica, it is the truth of art.

94

Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.

95

Attach thyself to truth; defend justice; rejoice in the beautiful. That which comes to thee with time, time will take away; that which is eternal will remain in thy heart.

96

I've always been suspicious of collective truths. I think an idea is true when it hasn't been put into words and that the moment it's put into words it becomes exaggerated. Because the moment it's put into words there's an abuse, an excess in the expression of the idea that makes it false.

97

Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That's what I wanted - to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself.

98

Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on earth.

99

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

100

Truth is a naked and open daylight

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