Quotes About Truth

The man who is asked by an author what he thinks of his work is put to the torture and is not obliged to speak the truth.

John the Baptist pretending to be Karl Marx.

When you put down the good things you ought to have done, and leave out the bad things you did do - well, that's memoirs.

It is only through fiction and the dimension of the imaginary that we can learn something real about individual experience. Any other approach is bound to be general and abstract.

As for style of writing, if one has anything to say, it drops from him simply and directly, as a stone falls to the ground.

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying . . . one must ruthlessly suppress everything that is not concerned with the subject. If, in the first chapter, you say there is a gun hanging on the wall, you should make quite sure that it is going to be used further on in the story.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as if it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

Just as there is nothing between the admirable omelette and the intolerable, so with autobiography.

If youth but knew, and age were able, Then poverty would be a fable.

Keep true to the dreams of thy youth.

Peace is not the mere absence of war. It is a positive condition of justice. It is the sister of charity and mercy. It is the offspring of honesty and truth. It is the triumph of principle.

I would say the broadcaster holds the shotgun in his hand when he's communicating, mainly because he is a part of the audience more than he is a communicator. That is his first strength. Next, he has the force — the power of the wires strung over the whole world. Then, he has the tools of persuasion. His cameras and microphones are mightier than the pen. He can bend the straw, and all he needs to do it is Truth. With truth, force, and persuasion he can save this country.

"Que scais-je?" was the motto of Montaigne, As also of the first academicians: That all is dubious which man may attain, Was one of their most favourite positions. There's no such thing as certainty, that's plain As any of Mortality's conditions; So little do we know what we're about in This world, I doubt if doubt itself would be doubting.

We are slaves to words. Speak often enough of an unreal thing, and after a while it becomes real. For instance, we have used the word "nation" for centuries. There is, however, no such thing as a nation. All that really exists is the individuals that compose a nation.

For in art there is no such thing as a universal truth.

There is no such thing as concealment. Commit a crime, and the earth is made of glass.

There is no study of human nature more interesting than the aspects of the same subject seen in the points of view of different characters. One might almost imagine that there were no such thing as absolute truth, since a change of situation or temperament is capable of changing the whole force of an argument.

There's more to the truth than just the facts.

You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Only in the early morning light of day, and of life, can we see the world without its shadows. Truth requires new beginnings.

You can't fall off the floor.

A straight stick looks crooked under water.

A man can fool you with his mind, and his Soul and his Heart, but if you follow his feet you will pretty near find out where he is going.

The problem is to be faced and the solution to be shirked.