Quotes About Truth

Good art shows us how difficult it is to be objective by showing us how differently the world looks to an objective vision.

Those who cry out the truth to an indifferent world too often weary, fall silent or come to doubt their own wit.

I accused Hartley of being a 'fantasist', or perhaps that was Titus's word, but what a 'fantasist' I have been myself. I was the dreamer, I the magician. How much, I see as I look back, I read into it all, reading my own dream text and not looking at the reality. Hartley had been right when she said of our love that it was not part of the real world. It had no place.

Tyrants always fear art because tyrants want to mystify while art tends to clarify. The good artist is a vehicle of truth Great art is able to display and discuss the central area of our reality, our actual consciousness, in a more exact way than science or even philosophy can.

But, and especially with Linda's help, he had decided that, like most other people, he was not made for reality.

Even what we are most certain of we know only in an illusory form.

Our planet is a freak which we shall destroy by our own wicked senseless activities in the next century. Our history will very soon come to an end. Now that God is dead, we are at last presented with the truth, yes, the truth remains, but it is on a short lead. Anyway, we are nothing and it matters not what we do.

As soon as any idea is a consolation the tendency to falsify it becomes strong: hence the traditional problem of preventing the idea of God from degenerating in the believer's mind.

I am in favour of illusion, not alienation... Drama must create a factitious spell-binding present moment and imprison the spectator in it. The theatre apes the profound truth that we are extended beings who yet can only exist in the present.

The trouble with you, Charles, is that basically you despise women, whereas I, in spite of some appearances to the contrary, do not. I don't despise women. I was in love with all Shakespeare's heroines before I was twelve. But they don't exist, dear man, that's the point. They live in the never-never land of art, all tricked out in Shakespeare's wit and wisdom, and mock us from there, filling us with false hopes and empty dreams. The real thing is spite and lies and arguments about money.

I saw . . . what I've really know all along, that you are my truth. For me you are the way the truth and the life. Only here can I be totally myself.

Even if readers claim that they 'take it all with a grain of salt', they do not really. They yearn to believe, and they believe, because believing is easier than disbelieving, and because anything which is written down is likely to be 'true in a way'. I trust this passing reflection will not lead anyone to doubt the truth of any part of this story! When I come to describe my life with Clement Makin credulity will be strained but will I hope not fail!

I lead a worthless life, he thought, I live in unreality and untruth. If only there could be total change, regeneration, escape. If only I could run and run and get back to the people, back to where real wholesome, ordinary life is being lived. I have given myself a mean role and cannot now stop enacting it. Oh if only I could get out! But even as he thought these familiar thoughts he knew: unreality is my reality, untruth is my truth, I am too old now and I have no other way.

God lives and works in history. The outward mythology changes, the inward truth remains the same.

Perhaps one could not live with such knowledge. One might die for it, or of it.

La gente no suele saber aplicar la filosofía. Dudo de que ni siquiera los filósofos sepan hacerlo. —La gente puede usar conceptos morales lo mismo que tú has usado ahora el concepto de la verdad para convencerme. Cualquiera puede hacerlo. —Quizá. Pero creo que la filosofía moral es algo que resulta desesperanzadamente personal. No puede ser comunicado. «Si un león hablase, no podríamos comprenderlo», ha dicho Wittgenstein.

It is unfortunately for us both also the truth that I love you and only you utterly and permanently and to distraction.

You've got to see me , Martin. I'm to blame. I've never been quite and entirely myself with you. The situation didn't let me be. The untruthfulness infected everything. I must break out a little? Do you see at all?

Artists are indeed unlikely to be good, goodness would silence them.

True politics is simply the drying of tears and the endless fight for freedom. Without freedom there is no art and no truth. I revere great artists and the men who say no to tyrants.

And could it be true without other awful things being true as well?

How absolute the knave is!

Art is not cosy and it is not mocked. Art tells the only truth that ultimately matters. It is the light by which human things can be mended. And after art there is, let me assure you all, nothing.

It is necessary at this point to recount what actually occurred, as opposed to what was generally supposed to have occurred, on that terrible evening when Lucas killed a man.