Quotes About Truth

People should be taught what is, not what should be. All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the breadline.

In the Halls of Justice the only justice is in the halls.

Today's comedian has a cross to bear that he built himself. A comedian of the older generation did an act and he told the audience, This is my act. Today's comic is not doing an act. The audience assumes he's telling the truth. What is truth today may be a damn lie next week.

My mother gave lots of good advice and had a lot to say. As you get older, you realize everything she said was true.

Now, today is the day we honor, of course, the Presidents, ranging from George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie, to George Bush, who couldn't tell the truth, to Bill Clinton, who couldn't tell the difference.

In the opera, there was only one great love for the characters. In... tales there was only one love as well - yes, even after death. Everything I had read or sung or felt said this was always the case. If you ignored this great truth, if you gave up on it of being too hard to hold on to, or let it slip away to have mere things , no real meaning could be left in life.

Euphemisms chosen by fear are a covenant with hypocrisy and will immediately destroy the poem and eventually destroy the poet.

There are no barriers to poetry or prophecy; by their nature they are barrier-breakers, bursts of perceptions, lines into infinity. If the poet lies about his vision he lies about himself and in himself; this produces a true barrier.

A minority is compelled to think; that is the blessing of its fate. It must always persist in a mental struggle for that consciousness of truth which success and power comfortingly assure to rulers and their supporting multitudes. The conviction of the many is based on the weight of possession; the conviction of the few is expressed through the energy of constant searching and finding.

Those who rule us have brilliantly applied the maxim that the best defense against truth is the unswerving repetition of lies.

The husband who doesn't tell his wife everything probably reasons that what she doesn't know won't hurt him.

Some mathematician has said pleasure lies not in discovering truth, but in seeking it.

The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the power of my soul, whom I have tried to portray in all his beauty, who has been, is, and will be beautiful, is Truth.

The rabbi of Chelm visited the prison, and there he heard all but one of the inmates insist on their innocence. So he came back, held a council of wise men, and recommended that Chelm have two prisons: one for the guilty and another for the innocent.

One cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood.

There is a remarkable sentence of Pascal according to which we know too little to be dogmatists and too much to be skeptics, which expresses beautifully what Plato conveys through his dialogues.

Three stages of truth for scientists: (1) It's not true. (2) If it is true, it's not very important. (3) We knew it all along.

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity.

The chief difference between words and deeds is that words are always intended for men for their approbation, but deeds can be done only for God.

The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.

Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!