Quotes About Truth

Think critically about what you are told. Do not accept the word of authority unthinkingly. Science is not a belief system: no belief system instructs you to question the system itself. Science does. (There are many scientists, however, who treat it as a belief system. Be wary of them.)

The young man is also an idealist. He has yet to find out that what's in the public interest is not what the public is interested in.

I mean, it's one thing saying you've got the best god, but sayin' it's the only real one is a bit of a cheek, in my opinion. I know where I can find at least two any day of the week. And they say everyone starts out bad and only gets good by believin' in Om, which is frankly damn nonsense.

He was up against a mind that regarded truth as a reference point but certainly not as a shackle.

a man needs no camel to ride to hell, yea, nor horse, nor mule; a man may ride into hell on his tongue...

He knew from experience that true and obvious ideas, such as the ineffable wisdom and judgment of the Great God Om, seemed so obscure to many people that you actually had to kill them before they saw the error of their ways...

Interesting thing, these fellows never seem to get the idea of perspective-' The Bursar thought, or received the thought: that's because perspective is a lie. If I know a pond is round then why should I draw it oval? I will draw it round because round is true. Why should my brush lie to you just because my eye lies to me?

I have woken up and I am real. I know where I come from and I know where I'm going. You cannot fool me any more.

Hah! said Granny Weatherwax. I should just say it is a folk song! I knows all about folk songs. Hah! You think you're listenin' to a nice song about...cuckoos and fiddlers and nightingales and whatnot, and then it turns out to be about...something else entirely, she added darkly.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact," said Granny. "But I don't hold with encouraging it.

The real world was far too real to leave neat little hints. It was full of too many things. It wasn't by eliminating the impossible that you got at the truth, however improbable; it was by the much harder process of eliminating the possibilities.

Everyone was guilty of something. Vimes knew that. Every copper knew it. That was how you maintained your authority—everyone, talking to a copper, was secretly afraid you could see their guilty secret written on their forehead. You couldn't, of course. But neither were you supposed to drag someone off the street and smash their fingers with a hammer until they told you what it was.

Granny Weatherwax was firmly against fiction. Life was hard enough without lies floating around and changing the way people thought. And because the theater was fiction made flesh, she hated the theater most of all. But that was it—hate was exactly the right word. Hate is a force of attraction. Hate is just love with its back turned.

Writing stays. It fastens words down. A man can speak his mind and some nasty wee scuggan will write it down and who knows what he'll do with those words? Ye might as weel nail a man's shadow tae the wall!

What was it they said about the gods? They wouldn't exist if there weren't people to believe in them? And that applied to everything. Reality was what went on inside people's heads.

What will you do?" said Susan. "Lie," said Lu-Tze happily. "It's amazing how often that works.

either the gods are there whether you believe or not, or exist only as a function of the belief, so either way you might as well ignore the whole business...

An' writin' even goes on sayin' a man's wurds after he's deid ! Ye cannae tell me that's right!

If it came to that, the book never gave you the evidence of anything. It talked about "a handsome prince"…was he really, or was it just because he was a prince that people called him handsome? As for "a girl who was as beautiful as the day was long"…well, which day? In midwinter it hardly ever got light! The stories didn't want you to think, they just wanted you to believe what you were told

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.

Despite rumor, Death isn't cruel—merely terribly, terribly good at his job.

71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious. He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans. He didn't believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren't true. He believed instead in the things that were true in which no one else believed.

DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR TRUST IN ROOT VEGETABLES. WHAT THINGS SEEM TO BE MAY NOT BE WHAT THEY ARE. -Death

Sometimes people fools themselves into believing things that aren't true. Sometimes that can be quite dangerous for the person. They see the world in a wrong way. They won't let themselves see that what they believe is wrong. But often there is a part of the mind that does know, and the right words can let it out.