Quotes About Truth

Unlike the interference of ordinary interest, power, or prejudice, which touches philosophy only at its outskirts and becomes at most a matter for philosophical tactics, the claim of revelation to the highest truth touches philosophy at its core and must affect its whole strategy.

For peer review, replication, and objectivity to make any headway on the continuum, for science to find the right answers to anything, there have to be wrong - or at least unlikely - answers.

I sometimes find reality far more fantastical and unlikely than what I could just make up.

True stories are always good because they're so odd, and so unlikely. It's always good to have a world that people don't know about - a world that hasn't yet been done. It's like treading on fresh snow. You're the first one there. It always feels good to be dealing with a period of history or a world that no one else has dealt with.

If you're an average married couple, you're going to lie to your spouse in one out of every 10 interactions. Now, you may think that's bad. If you're unmarried, that number drops to three.

Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible.

There's nothing unnatural in creation.

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The theater is unnatural, a place of imagination. But the theater tells the audience something true: that the world requires judgments.

A lot of things in films are cheated with the use of camera tricks, so while it may feel unnatural to do, when you look at the result, you realise that it is right.

I thought then, and I think now, that the invasion of Iraq was unnecessary and unjust. And I think the premises on which it was launched were false.

Hitherto I have courted Truth with a kind of Romantick Passion, in spite of all Difficulties and Discouragements: for knowledge is thought so unnecessary an Accomplishment for a Woman, that few will give themselves the Trouble to assist us in the Attainment of it.

I don't go out of my way to be friendly, because it's completely unnecessary. People tell you what they are going to tell you no matter what.

All comedy is funny because it tells us truths that we recognise through laughter, but that doesn't mean it can't be unnerving. Think of 'Fawlty Towers'; it can be very, very dark, but by God, it's funny. The two things are not in opposition.

In pre-movie days, the business of peddling lies about life was spotty and unorganized. It was carried on by the cheaper magazines, dime novels, the hinterland preachers and whooping politicians.

After the fighting is done, and even when it's still happening, apologies are often needed for the recounting of bare facts. Sometimes bare facts feel unpatriotic.

Don't blame the messenger because the message is unpleasant.

The hardest thing is to tell the truth about oneself. One doesn't like to remember unpleasant details, but forgetting them makes one's life seem disorganized.

People idealize or reminisce about their 20s, but nobody tells you beforehand that it's hard and unglamorous and often very unpleasant.

Politicians don't like to face unpleasant realities. In truth, nobody does, but as individuals, we have no choice; if we neglect to plan ahead, we are held accountable. Fail to meet your responsibilities at work, and you get fired. Ignore your car's gas gauge, and you get stranded.

Journalists always explain that people are mad at them because they tell the truth, which is often unpleasant or uncomfortable to hear. However, they fail in situations where there is more than one truth.

When you go into to vacationing with kids, what people don't get is that there is a portion of it that's going to be unpleasant because you're traveling with children. When people have these expectations that it's going to be perfect or amazing, that has never been my experience.

Life is not a matter of theories. Life is a matter of facts. It calls on the young and the old alike to face these facts, even though they are hard and sometimes unpleasant.

I don't want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He's a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

Deep inside, we all want to blurt out every obnoxious, politically incorrect, unpopular truism we think lurks inside us.