Quotes About Truth

The saddest task for the ironist is having to tell the listener that it's a joke, because of course it is never a joke.

Someone knows—someone in the government, or the army, or the police. This is a government of secrets. If there are secrets, there can be no justice.

Travel had to do with movement and truth, with trying everything, offering yourself to experience and then reporting it.

I told him to tell the truth,' Mr. Fang said. 'It is important to know the truth about the Cultural Revolution. Foreigners must be told. We must face the facts. It was a disaster ...

I came to see that for him, for most sociopaths, he had no memory—took no responsibility for anything he'd said or done—had no past, no history, it never happened. Memory is essential to conscience; he had no conscience.

I kept the letter those forty years as a talisman, as a goad, and as a rare example of the severe honesty of someone who seldom told the truth.

Telling the truth and being ethical often keeps people from political power, but doing the right thing, always, without exception, is all that matters in the long run, and is ultimately powerful. That's why the true heroes of the civil rights struggle were never politicians. They were humble folk on a mission, enduring sit-ins and organizing marches and debates. When they began to succeed, the politicians, seeing an opportunity, followed them.

Truth is not a saga of alarming episodes; it is a detail, usually a small one, that gives a fiction life.

Look for the truth in nature, I wanted to say to those cookie-eating missionaries in the next compartment; nothing is complete, everything is imperfect, nothing lasts. Go to bed.

nothing is more indicative of a war going badly than valiant propaganda ... Anything officially denied was probably a fact.

There are no pessimists; there are only realists and liars.

Since there was no longer a horizon towards which to rush, they would invent fake ones - substitute horizons.

What's the world's greatest lie?" the boy asked. "It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.

What's the world's greatest lie?... It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate.

Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.

Love simply is.

Everyone believes the world's greatest lie... says the mysterious old man. What is the world's greatest lie? the little boy asks. The old man replies, It's this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie.

Only two things can reveal life's great secrets: suffering and love.

It's not what enters men's mouth that is evil, said the alchemist. It's what comes out of their mouths that is.

We always have a tendency to see those things that do not exist and to be blind to the great lessons that are right there before our eyes.

You say they create their own reality, said Veronika, but what is reality?

what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over

I understand once again that the greatness of God always reveals itself in the simple things.

No one lights a lamp in order to hide it behind the door: the purpose of light is to create more light, to open people's eyes, to reveal the marvels around.