Quotes About Truth

No one can be a great thinker who does not recognise, that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

toda época ha sostenido opiniones que las épocas posteriores han demostrado ser, no sólo falsas, sino absurdas;

Existe la más grande diferencia entre presumir que una opinión es verdadera, porque oportunamente no ha sido refutada, y suponer que es verdadera a fin de no permitir su refutación.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility. Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

In the present age—which has been described as "destitute of faith, but terrified at skepticism"—in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them—the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society.

La ventaja real que la verdad tiene consiste en esto: que cuando una opinión es verdadera, puede ser extinguida una, dos o muchas veces, pero en el curso de las edades, generalmente, se encontrarán personas que la vuelvan a descubrir, y una de estas reapariciones tendrá lugar en un tiempo en el que por circunstancias favorables escape a la persecución, hasta que consiga la fuerza necesaria para resistir todos los intentos ulteriores para suprimirla.

in an imperfect state of the human mind, the interests of truth require a diversity of opinions.

In sober truth, whatever homage may be professed, or even paid, to real or supposed mental superiority, the general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.

Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either.

the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

There is the greatest difference between assuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right.

NOT THE VIOLENT CONFLICT BETWEEN PARTS OF THE TRUTH, BUT THE QUIET SUPPRESSION OF HALF OF IT, IS THE FORMIDABLE EVIL; THERE IS ALWAYS HOPE WHEN PEOPLE ARE FORCED TO LISTEN TO BOTH SIDES; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudices, and truth itself ceases to have the effect of truth, by being exaggerated into falsehood.

Only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of the human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth.

Todo partidario de castigar la emisión de opiniones, a menos que se crea un hombre más prudente y mejor que Marco Aurelio, más versado que él en la sabiduría de su tiempo, de mayor elevación intelectual, más ardiente en la investigación de la verdad o más devotamente consagrado a ella una vez hallada, debe abstenerse de declarar su propia infalibilidad con la de la multitud, como lo hizo con tan desdichado resultado el gran Antonino.

The beliefs which we have most warrant for, have no safeguard to rest on, but a standing invitation to the whole world to prove them unfounded. If the challenge is not accepted, or is accepted and the attempt fails, we are far enough from certainty still; but we have done the best that the existing state of human reason admits of; we have neglected nothing that could give the truth a chance of reaching us:

However unwillingly a person who has a strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, he ought to be moved by the consideration that, however true it may be, if it is not fully, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth.

In North Korea, journalism, the job of telling the stories power and money do not want told, of giving a voice to the voiceless, does not exist.

Our ignorance of history makes us slander our own times, wrote Gustave Flaubert.

Show and prove to the world, to angels and to God, that you are on the side of truth and right, of honesty, purity and integrity, and that you are for God in His kingdom.

What they write in rule books and how things really work are never the same. We all learn that as we get older.

Senin diplomanda bir "tarih öÄŸretmeni" olduÄŸun yaz?yor, oysa öÄŸrettiÄŸin ÅŸey propagandadan baÅŸka bir ÅŸey deÄŸil.