Quotes About Truth

There is all the same some truth to the allegation that — as one intimate put it — the American Revolution could be blamed on the Harvard College library.3

We all subscribe to preposterous beliefs; we just don't know yet which ones they are. We

The truth is smudged forever by Roman manhandling. (218)

in the absence of facts, myth rushes in

To restore Cleopatra is as much to salvage the few facts as to peel away the encrusted myth and the hoary propaganda.

History's what people are trying to hide from you, not what they're trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury. — HILARY MANTEL "I

A man craves ultimate truths. Every mortal mind, I think, is that way. But what is ultimate truth? It's the end of the road, where there is no more mystery, no more hope. And no more questions to ask, since all the answers have been given. But there is no such place. The Universe is a labyrinth made of labyrinths. Each leads to another. And wherever we cannot go ourselves, we reach with mathematics. Out of mathematics we build wagons to carry us into the nonhuman realms of the world.

Every science comes with its own pseudo-science, a bizarre distortion that comes from a certain kind of mind.

Psychoanalysis provides truth in an infantile, that is, a schoolboy fashion: we learn from it, roughly and hurriedly, things that scandalize us and thereby command our attention. It sometimes happens, and such is the case here, that a simplification touching upon the truth, but cheaply, is of no more value than a lie. Once again we are shown the demon and the angel, the beast and the god locked in Manichean embrace, and once again man has been pronounced, by himself, not culpable.

We came here as we truly are, and when the other side shows us that truth—the part of it we pass over in silence—we're unable to come to terms with it!

The most recent of the iamides, heavily advertised - authentium. Creates synthetic recollections of things that never happened. A few grams of dantine, for instance, and a man goes around with a deep conviction that he has written The Divine Comedy. Why anyone would want that is another matter and quite beyond me.

Siempre es más fácil confesar un hecho, que demostrar que no se ha cometido. En este caso particular, la presencia de un cifrado hubiera sido una cosa sencilla; en cambio, su ausencia debía provocar complicaciones [...]. Ocurre que para aclarar todo esto hay que hacer uso de unas explicaciones verdaderas pero muy complicadas

Nosotros contamos la verdad por cuanto en los cuentos siempre triunfa la verdad.

We think of ourselves as the Knights of the Holy Contact. This is another lie. We are only seeking Man. We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.

los que más gritan por la paz, son los primeros en quebrantarla.

If everything became 'artificial,' then nothing was 'artificial.

People do not want immortality,' I continued. 'They simply do not want to die. They want to live, Decantor. They want to feel the ground beneath their feet, see the clouds overhead, love other people, be with them, and think. Nothing more. Everything that has been said beyond that is a lie. An unconscious lie.

He who has had, has been, but he who hasn't been, has been had

ignoramus et ignorabimus

freedom of expression sometimes presents a greater threat to an idea, because forbidden thoughts may circulate in secret, but what can be done when an important fact is lost in a flood of impostors, and the voice of truth becomes drowned out in an ungodly din?

When that voice, though freely resounding, cannot be heard, because the technologies of information have led to a situation in which one can receive best the message of him who shouts the loudest, even when the most falsely?

Per un periodo c'eravamo tormentati a furia di sincerità, nell'ingenua convinzione che ci avrebbe salvato

I libri buoni sono sempre anche veritieri, perfino quando raccontano vicende che non sono mai successe e non succederanno. Sono veri in un altro senso.

We're all sticking our heads in the sand here, Kelvin, but at least we're aware of it and we're not trying to act noble.