Quotes About Truth

He reflected. 'I know a lot of different kids of people; what I want is to show each of them how the others really are. You hear so many lies!

It is because I reject lies and running away that I am accused of pessimism; but this rejection implies hope — the hope that truth may be of use. And this is a more optimistic attitude than the choice of indifference, ignorance or sham.

People say you have to have faith because believing is irrational. So I end up thinking that the more irrational things seem, the more likely they are to be true.

All those minds that are interested in finding out the truth communicate with each other across the distances of space and time. I, too, was taking part in the effort which humanity makes to know.

Literature takes its revenge on reality by making it the slave of fiction.

Du jour où il nait, l'homme commence à mourir; c'est la vérité qu'incarne la Mère.

Man may reproach women for their dissimulation, but his complacency must be great indeed for him to be so constantly duped.

Today it strikes me that the most important aspect of these conversations was not so much what we said as what we took for granted, and what in fact was not so at all. We were wrong about almost everything. An accurate character sketch must take these errors into account, since they expressed one kind of reality - our actual situation.

at the end of the last century, the police discovered two little girls of twelve or thirteen in a bordello; a trial was held where they testified; they spoke of their clients, who were important gentlemen; one of them opened her mouth to give a name. The judge abruptly stopped her: Do not sully the name of an honest man!

The fact is that a true human privilege is based upon the anatomical privilege only in virtue of the total situation. Psychoanalysis can establish its truths only in the historical context.

I was too enamored of truth ever to mourn lost illusions.

le parole fissano la verità solo dopo averla assassinata; lasciano sfuggire ciò che v'è in essa di più importante: la sua presenza.

Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting.

Defending the truth is not something one does out of a sense of duty or to allay guilt complexes, but is a reward in itself.

At the present time there still exist many doctrines which choose to leave in the shadow certain troubling aspects of a too complex situation. But their attempt to lie to us is in vain. Cowardice does not pay. Those reasonable metaphysics, those consoling ethics with which they would like to entice us only accentuate the disorder from which we suffer.

But I know my only defense is to answer, "I think it because it is true," thereby eliminating my subjectivity;

Existence asserts itself as an absolute which must seek its justification within itself and not suppress itself. To attain this truth, man must not attempt to dispel the ambiguity of his being but, on the contrary, accept the task of realizing it.

What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.)

Today I believe that, under the specially privileged conditions in which I exist, life contains two main truths which we must face simultaneously, and between which there is no choice - the joy of being, the horror of being no more.

En mi juventud se me ha dicho tanto que estaba equivocada, tener razón me ha costado tanto, que rechazo equivocarme

Basta!' Seguí. Quería que se fuera; verdaderamente lo quería, era sincera. Sincera porque no creí que lo hiciera. Era como un espantoso psicodrama en el que uno juega a la verdad.

L'amore tra noi era reale, era solido, indistruttibile quanto la verità. Solo, c'era questo fatto del tempo che passava e io non me n'accorgevo. Il fiume del tempo, l'erosione operata dalle acque dei fiumi: ecco, il suo amore ha subito l'erosione delle acque del tempo. Ma allora, perché il mio no?

Non avevo idee sovversive, anzi, non avevo affatto idee, su nulla; ma per tutto il giorno mi allenavo a riflettere, a comprendere, a criticare, e mi ponevo domande; cercavo con precisione la verità: questo scrupolo mi rendeva inadatta alle conversazioni mondane.

Die Vorstellung der Welt ist, wie die Welt selbst, das Produkt der Männer: Sie beschreiben sie von ihrem Standpunkt aus, den sie mit dem der absoluten Wahrheit gleichsetzen.