Quotes About Truth

When the religious Cowper confesses in the opening lines of his address to the famous Yardley oak, that the sense of awe and reverence it inspired in him would have made him bow himself down and worship it but for the happy fact that his mind was illumined with the knowledge of the truth, he is but saying what many feel without in most cases recognizing the emotion for what it is—the sense of the supernatural in nature.

To think wishfully, to rest in comforting illusion when scientific truth is conceivably within reach, is to desecrate both one's self and the universe.

Facts and logical arguments no longer matter; people decide what to believe based on tribal alliances, on what they want to believe, or what they feel is true.

Although the truth exists objectively and independently of us, we can never be absolutely certain we grasp it.

That shoreline where the island of knowing meets the unfathomable sea of our own being is the landscape of myth.

Truth wears no mask Bows at no human Shrine Seeks neither place nor applause She only asks a hearing.

The essence of education is, in the words of William James, to teach a person what deserves to be valued, to impart ideals as well as knowledge, to cultivate in students the ability to distinguish the true and good from their counterfeits and the wisdom to prefer the former to the latter.

It is only when we live in accordance with the rule of God that our life is set in order," he declared a decade later; "apart from this ordering, there is nothing in human life but confusion.

Neatness, madam, has nothing to do with the truth. The truth is quite messy, like a wind blown room.

McCarthy succeeded because he discovered and made full use of a tradition of American journalism—that most newpapermen report the news 'straight.' This means that if a prominent person says something sensational—even if untrue—the press normally will report the statement exactly as spoken ... The press simply acts as a mirror.

People don't see the world as it is, rather we impose our beliefs on what we experience.

There is no doubt that healthy-mindedness is inadequate as a philosophical doctrine, because the evil facts which it refuses positively to account for are a genuine portion of reality; and they may after all be the best key to life's significance, and possibly the only openers of our eyes to the deepest levels of truth.

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

The concrete man has but one interest—to be right. That to him is the art of all arts, and all means are fair which help him to it.

Truth, as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their "agreement," as falsity means their disagreement, with "reality."

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

Circumstance does not make me, it reveals me.

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

There is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.

True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse.

So necessary is it not only that we should be what we appear, but appear what we are.

No one can earn a million dollars honestly.

The humblest citizen of all the land when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of Error.