Quotes About Truth

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

Both also recognized that intellect was not drawn from reading alone. Intuition about individuals, the masses, and the truth of a reported situation was essential. That came from being out among others and engaging. Both inclined toward solitude, they each made the effort to pull themselves away from the page.

casualty reports on either side are never accurate, seldom truthful, and in most cases deliberately falsified.

Your view of the world is just as skewed as someone who has never seen combat... We all state our convictions from within our convictions.

Trying to divine some essential truth about evil is toxic, like inhaling fumes.

There is no true religious formation which is not based on the Gospel.

A conscience is that still small voice that people won't listen to.

Lies, my dear boy, can easily be recognized. There are two kind of them: those with short legs, and those with long noses. Your kind have long noses.

Where are the gold pieces now?' the Fairy asked. 'I lost them,' answered Pinocchio, but he told a lie, for he had them in his pocket. As he spoke, his nose, long though it was, became at least two inches longer.

Non ti fidare, ragazzo mio, di quelli che promettono di farti ricco dalla mattina alla sera. Per il solito, o sono matti o imbroglioni!

Gli storici, scrisse Aristotele (Poetica, 51 b) parlano di quello che è stato (del vero), i poeti parlano di quello che avrebbe potuto essere (del possibile). Ma naturalmente il vero è un punto d'arrivo, non un punto di partenza. Gli storici (e, in modo diverso, i poeti) fanno per mestiere qualcosa che è parte della vita di tutti: districare l'intreccio di vero, falso, finto che è la trama del nostro stare al mondo.

men, incapable of liberty-who cannot stand the terror of the sacred that manifests itself before their open eyes-must turn to mystery, must hide...the...truth.

Ever since we discovered that Earth is round and turns like a mad spinning-top, we have understood that reality is not as it appears to us.

It is like the point where the rainbow touches the forest. We think that we can see it—but if we go to look for it, it isn't there.

We are all in the depths of a cave, chained by our ignorance, by our prejudices, and our weak senses reveal to us only shadows. If we try to see further, we are confused; we are unaccustomed. But we try. This is science. Scientific

Human beings often cling to their certainties for fear that their opinions will be proven false. But a certainty that cannot be called into question is not a certainty. Solid certainties are those that survive questioning. In order to accept questioning as the foundation for our voyage toward knowledge, we must be humble enough to accept that today's truth may become tomorrow's falsehood.

The most credible answers are the ones given by science, because science IS the search for the most credible answers available, not for answers pretending to certainty.

Being aware that we may be wrong is different from claiming that it is senseless to speak of right and wrong. Recognizing diversity and taking seriously ideas that diverge from our own is different from claiming that all ideas are equally worthy. Knowing that a given judgment is born within a complex cultural context and is related to many others does not necessarily imply that we are unable to recognize it is wrong.

What I see, in other words, is not a reproduction of the external world. It is what I expect, corrected by what I can grasp. The relevant input is not that which confirms what we already know, but that which contradicts our expectations.

In the awareness that we can always be wrong, and therefore ready at any moment to change direction if a new track appears; but knowing also that if we are good enough we will get it right and will find what we are seeking. This is the nature of science. The

When Lemaître defends the idea that the universe is expanding, and Einstein does not believe it, one of the two is wrong; the other, right. All of Einstein's results, his fame, his influence on the scientific world, his immense authority, count for nothing. The observations prove him wrong, and it's game over. An obscure Belgian priest is right. It is for this reason that scientific thinking has power.

we have realized that it is our immediate intuitions that are imprecise:

Perhaps it is we who have not yet learned to look at it from just the right point of view, one that would reveal its hidden simplicity.

La precariedad de la verdad no implica que no podamos ponernos de acuerdo.