Quotes About Truth

These data are unequivocal: we are building a civilization of ignorance.

Religion is the one area of our discourse where it is considered noble to pretend to be certain about things no human being could possibly be certain about.

came away convinced that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly

Merely being offended, or worried, isn't a counter-argument. It isn't a deep reason not to think about something or discover whether or not something is true or useful.

every religion preaches the truth of propositions for which it has no evidence.

The truth is that most of our modern values are antithetical to the specific teachings of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. And where we do find these values expressed in our holy books, they are almost never best expressed there.

The point is that his authority would be derived in the only way that such authority ever is—by making claims about the world that can be corroborated by further observation

we spend most of our lives forgetting this truth—overlooking it, fleeing it, repudiating it. And the horror is that we succeed. We manage to avoid being happy while struggling to become happy, fulfilling one desire after the next, banishing our fears, grasping at pleasure, recoiling from pain—and thinking, interminably, about how best to keep the whole works up and running.

Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world. Only Christianity.

They believe in the literal truth of the Koran.

There does not seem to be anything within the principles of Islam by which to resist the slide into sharia (Islamic law), while there is everything to encourage it. This is a terrible truth that we have to face:

Biblical worldview.

By lying, we deny our friends access to reality9—and their resulting ignorance often harms them in ways we did not anticipate. Our friends may act on our falsehoods, or fail to solve problems that could have been solved only on the basis of good information. Rather often, to lie is to infringe on the freedom of those we care about.

religious traditions are no more reliable on questions of ethics than they have been on scientific questions generally.

Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. Knowing that we told the truth in the past leaves us with nothing to keep track of. We can simply be ourselves in every moment. In

Bertrand Russell

Funny or not, the story reveals something distasteful about Sita: She will lie when it suits her needs.

Faith is like a pickpocket who loans a person his own money on generous terms.

The promise of spiritual life - indeed, the very thing that makes it 'spiritual' in the sense I invoke throughout this book - is that there are truths about the mind that we are better off knowing. What we need to become happier and to make the world a better place is not more pious illusions but a clearer understanding of the way things are.

I came away convinced that lying, even about the smallest matters, needlessly damages personal relationships and public trust.

One of the worst things about breaking the law is that it puts one at odds with an indeterminate number of other people. This is among the many corrosive effects of having unjust laws: They tempt peaceful and (otherwise) honest people to lie so as to avoid being punished for behavior that is ethically blameless. 

we are confronted by people who hold beliefs for which there is no rational justification

Uno de los principales problemas del mentiroso es que debe seguir el rastro de sus mentiras.

viable path to God