Quotes About Truth

Truisms, my young friend, are the useless children of hindsight. Well

They want so hard to believe in what they've been taught that they find ways to rationalize things they wouldn't stand for otherwise. They need to keep their

but I am old. It is important to accept truths, even when they are inconvenient.

Glories, like glow-worms, afar off shine bright, But look'd too near have neither heat nor light.' John Webster (c.1580–1634), English Jacobean dramatist

The theatre can teach us some truth, but it is the truth of the illusory nature of our existence. It can alert us to the dream-like quality of our lives, their brevity, mutability and lack of solid grounds. As such, by reminding us of our mortality, it can foster in us the virtue of humility.

It is said that an eighteenth-century bishop who read Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels threw the book into the fire, indignantly declaring that he didn't believe a word of it. He obviously thought that the story was meant to be true, but suspected that it was invented. Which, of course, is just what it is. The bishop was dismissing the fiction because he thought it was fiction.

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods and vermin is ideology.

Statements of fact are after all statements, which presumes a number of questionable judgements: that those statements are worth making, perhaps more worth making than certain others, that I am the sort of person entitled to make them and perhaps able to guarantee their truth, that you are the kind of person worth making them to, that something useful is accomplished by making them, and so on.

The role of the intellectual, so it is said, is to speak truth to power. Noam Chomsky has dismissed this pious tag on two grounds. For one thing, power knows the truth already; it is just busy trying to conceal it. For another, it is not those in power who need the truth, but those they oppress.

Jesus hung out with whores and social outcasts, was remarkably casual about sex, disapproved of the family... urged us to be laid-back about property and possessions, warned his followers that they too would die violently, and insisted that the truth kills and divides as well as liberates. He also cursed self-righteous prigs and deeply alarmed the ruling class

But if we are not given his real name, then he does not have one.

Theology, however implausible many of its truth claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an increasingly specialized world

Quem quiser saber aquilo que homens e mulheres creem precisa dar uma olhada no que eles fazem, não no que dizem

The nearest one could approach to truth was to cultivate a suitably ironic sense of one's own phoniness.

The Wizard's First Rule: People are stupid; given proper motivation almost anyone will believe almost anything.

Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.

Right and wrong are not the product of census.

Wizard's Tenth Rule Willfully turning aside from the truth is treason to one's self.

Being afraid something is true is accepting the possibility. Accepting the possibility is the first step to believing.

Honor is honesty to what is, not blind duty to what you wish to be.

If something is wrong, it matters not if a thousand men are for it; you must still oppose it. If something is just, no amount of popular outcry should stay you from your course.

Wizard's Ninth Rule A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.

Perception was easily accomplished, required little effort, and it never had to stand the test of reality.

Truth has advocates who seek understanding, Richard said. Corrupt ideas have miserable little fanatics who attempt to enforce their beliefs through intimidation and brutality... through faith. Savage force is faith's obedient servant. Violence on an apocalyptic scale can only be born of faith because reason, by its very nature, disarms senseless cruelty. Only faith thinks to justify it.