Quotes About Truth

Even individuals we admire can have skeletons in their closet.

You have to remember what a comfort religion is. It provides all the answers. It makes life simple. Nothing makes you feel better than doing what the prophet commands you to do… If you want to know the truth, I think people within the religion are probably happier, on the whole, than people on the outside. But some things in life are more important than being happy. Like being free to think for yourself.

When this casuistry came to light

Historian D. Michael Quinn refers to the Saints' bald-faced dissembling as "theocratic ethics." The Mormons called it "Lying for the Lord."*

We understand that honor, truth and hard work win in the end. We are Montana.

All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith.

Those who would assail The Book of Mormon should bear in mind that its veracity is no more dubious than the veracity of the Bible, say, or the Qur'an, or the sacred texts of most other religions. The latter texts simply enjoy the considerable advantage of having made their public debut in the shadowy recesses of the ancient past, and are thus much harder to refute.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, an obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from The inhospitable board.

Police and prosecutors are morally and professionally obligated to make every effort to identify specious rape reports, safeguard the civil rights of rape suspects, and prevent the falsely accused from being convicted. At the same time, however, police and prosecutors are obligated to do everything in their power to identify individuals who have committed rape and ensure that the guilty are brought to justice. These two objectives are not mutually exclusive.

imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

We truly believed that we were on God's side, and in spite of everything—the beatings, the bombings, the burnings—God's truth would prevail," Lewis recalled. The anguish and the duration of the struggle was, in a way, a vindication of the premise of the struggle itself—that this was the ultimate battle to bring light to darkness no matter how often darkness prevailed.

Costly grace…is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

for devotees of doctrine tended to fall in love with their own righteousness, ignoring inconvenient facts.

The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded. He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.

To seek vindication in the world but to suspect

One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it," the president said. "These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war." There was no escaping this central truth.

Watergate is a shabby, tawdry business that demeans the Presidency. Am I failing to lead by not stating that?

We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law.

Fact is what we can see or discern; truth is the larger significance we extrapolate from those facts.

If he did not suffer, if he did not bleed, if he did not feel every bit of the pain of execution as he gulped for air, then he would not be the Christ we know. He was fulfilling his epochal role in history on that cross; he was not playacting, not a god pretending to die. He was the Word made flesh, who was, however strangely and incomprehensibly, full of grace and truth.

Believe me, there is nothing wrong with this country that repeated strong dosages of the facts will not correct," Hoyt told other editors at a Tucson, Arizona, meeting in November 1954. "Even McCarthyism will melt away before this treatment.

One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception.

Let's face it," my Deep Throat had said to me, "nobody rules the world anymore. The markets rule the world. Maybe that's why your conspiracy theorists make up all those crazy things. Because the truth is so much more frightening. Nobody rules the world. Nobody controls anything.

It's about the terror, isn't it? The terror of what? The terror of being found out.