Quotes About Truth

The critic as an alchemist practicing the obscure art of transmuting the futile elements of the real into the shining, enduring gold of truth

trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

Qualquer movimento, os movimentos do corpo e da alma, bem como o discurso e o raciocínio, devem cessar diante da verdade. Esta, seja a antiga verdade do Ser ou a verdade cristã do Deus vivo, só pode revelar-se na quietude humana.

Wat zou ik anders moeten doen? Ik kan de mensen toch niet zeggen: 'Jullie begrijpen me verkeerd. In feite voel ik in mijn hart iets anders!' Dat is pas belachelijk.

Sólo se puede confiar en las palabras si uno está seguro de que su función es revelar y no ocultar.

In other words, the deliberate denial of factual truth—the ability to lie—and the capacity to change facts—the ability to act—are interconnected; they owe their existence to the same source: imagination.

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

As Tony Judt wrote a few years ago in The New York Review of Books,8 Arendt made many small errors for which her critics will never forgive her. But she got many of the big things right and for this she deserves to be remembered.

the Stalin regime was ruthlessly consistent: all facts that did not agree, or were likely to disagree, with the official fiction—data on crop-yields, criminality, true incidences of "counter-revolutionary" activities as distinguished from the later conspiracy fictions—were treated as non-facts.

La dicotomía entre contemplar la verdad en soledad y apartamiento y quedar atrapado en las relaciones y relatividades de los asuntos humanos se convirtió en algo indiscutible para la tradición del pensamiento político.

What seems paradoxical about everything that is justly called beautiful is the fact that it appears

It is like the distinction between war and peace: just as war takes place for the sake of peace, thus every kind of activity, even the processes of mere thought, must culminate in the absolute quiet of contemplation.11 Every movement, the movements of body and soul as well as of speech and reasoning, must cease before truth. Truth, be it the ancient truth of Being or the Christian truth of the living God, can reveal itself only in complete human stillness.12 Traditionally

Le mensonge est plus fort que la vérité, car il comble l'attente.

fascination in the possibility that gigantic lies and monstrous falsehoods can eventually be established as unquestioned facts, that man may be free to change his own past at will, and that the difference between truth and falsehood may cease to be objective and become a mere matter of power and cleverness, of pressure and infinite repetition. Not Stalin's and Hitler's

Is that what you wanted to hear? No. The man reached over, took hold of the lantern and blew it out. Night enveloped the barn. Well, he said at last to the darkness between them, that's when you know it's the truth.

Is that what you wanted to hear?" "No." The man reached over, took hold of the lantern, and blew it out. Night enveloped the barn. "Well," he said at last to the darkness between them, "that's when you know it's the truth.

Remember, then, that the real thing in your experience is what your will decides, and not the verdict of your emotions; and that you are far more in danger of hypocrisy and untruth in yielding to the assertions of your feelings, than in holding fast to the decision of your will. So that, if your will is on God's side, you are no hypocrite at this moment in claiming as your own the blessed reality of belonging altogether to Him, even though your emotions may all declare the contrary.

the earth is not a fresh-air resort and the idyllic prospectuses of the earth tell lies.

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly, for the most essential things are invisible to the eye.

the heart that one can see clearly, for the most essential things are invisible

No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.

It is only with the heart that one can see clearly, for the most essential things are invisible to the eye. – ANTONIE DE SAINTE EXUPERY

he had made a mirror with the power of causing all that was good and beautiful when it was reflected therein, to look poor and mean; but that which was good-for-nothing and looked ugly was shown magnified and increased in ugliness. In

But he hasn't got anything on, a little child said.