Quotes About Truth

Leaphorn had found that listening carefully to lies is sometimes very revealing of the truth.

I am an agnostic on most matters of faith, but on the subject of maps I have always been a true believer. It is on the map, therefore it is, and I am.

The historian's task is not to disrupt for the sake of it, but it is to tell what is almost always an uncomfortable story and explain why the discomfort is part of the truth we need to live well and live properly. A well organized society is one in which we know the truth about ourselves collectively, not one in which we tell pleasant lies about ourselves.

Loss is loss, and nothing is gained by calling it by a nicer name.

There are no angels in America.

You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

Roy: The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.

YOU HAVE TO ASK HARD QUESTIONS.

You do not live in America. No such place exists.

Oh you only think you know all I know. I don't even know what all I know. Half the time I just make it up, and it still turns out to be true! We learned that trick in the fifties. Tomorrow

Harper: When we think we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing? Prior: The limitations of the imagination? Harper: Yes.

I fooled you, Ethel, I knew who you were all along. I can't believe you fell for that ma stuff. I just wanted to see if I could finally, finally make Ethel Rosenberg sing!

You have to have hope. It's irresponsible to give false hope, which I think a lot of playwrights are guilty of. But I also think it's irresponsible to simply be a nihilist, which quite a lot of playwrights, especially playwrights younger than me, have become guilty of.

Respect the delicate ecology of your delusions.

Imagination can't create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions... So when we thing we've escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it's really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don't you think it's depressing?

I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.

and what is remembered is so seldom true

The voice of God never contradicts Scripture. God never tells us to do something that is different from what he's already expressed through his Word. Though I know God uses prayer, promptings, circumstances, other people, etc., to get our attention and to point us in a new direction, he never tells us to move down a path that's contrary to his plan communicated through the Bible.

Sometimes I think that love is a case of mistaken identity.

What's the alternative to being right? Maybe it is being well. Not trying to control others, but practicing self-control and self-containment.

Lying is second nature to him... More than anyone else I have ever met, Trump has the ability to convince himself that whatever he is saying at any given moment is true, or sort of true, or at least ought to be true.

Truthful hyperbole' is a contradiction in terms. It's a way of saying, 'It's a lie, but who cares?' 

To have faith is to believe in truth, believe that truth confers special power on those lucky enough to get a little insight, and to know in our hearts that all these things come from God, which is why we should never get too cocky about our successes.

And with every exercise, he reminds us of the one and only rule. Acting isn't pretending. The clue is in the word. Acting is doing. Being. Becoming.