Quotes About Truth

He draws a line under his conclusions. Says, 'Gregory, what should I do about the great worm?' 'Send a commission against it, sir,' the boy says. 'It must be put down.' He gives his son a long look. 'You do know it's Arthur Cobbler's tales?' Gregory gives him a long look back. 'Yes, I do know.' He sounds regretful. 'But it makes people so happy when I believe them.

we are not priests. We don't want their sort of confession. We are lawyers. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use.

These are days of brutal truth from Tyndale. Saints are not your friends and they will not protect you. They cannot help you to salvation. You cannot engage them to your service with prayers and candles, as you might hire a man for the harvest. Christ's sacrifice was done on Calvary; it is not done in the Mass. Priests cannot help you to Heaven; you need no priest to stand between you and your God. No merits of yours can save you: only the merits of the living Christ.

If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?

you cannot tell people just part of the tale and then stop, or just tell them the parts you choose.

When a man admits guilt we have to believe him. We cannot set ourselves to proving to him that he is wrong. Otherwise the law courts would never function.

You must believe everything and nothing of what you read.

If what someone wants from you is an admission, it is never in your interest to give it.

Thomas More says that the imperial troops, for their enjoyment, are roasting live babies on spits. Oh, he would! says Thomas Cromwell. Listen, soldiers don't do that. They're too busy carrying away everything they can turn into ready money.

Occam's Razor shaves you closer.

Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare.

He wants to ask her, what did you think would come out of this? That you would sit in a turret, and Tom Truth come riding over the hills, his lyre slung behind his saddle? And you at the high window, letting down your strawberry tresses? When Mary Fitzroy stood guard outside the door, did you know how your beau would secure you, with a brutal thrust that made you bleed? Did you know how he would use and spoil you?

Usually he is the soul of courtesy. But if you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?

And yet … he feels something, in his heart, and then he sits down and works out the logic of it, in his head. Then he says that the head part came first; and we believe him.

You start out, you start talking, you don't even know what you're going to say. You don't even know your way to the end of the sentence. You don't know anything. Then suddenly you do know you have to walk blind and you walk slap into the truth.

History's what people are trying to hide from you, not what they're trying to show you. You search for it in the same way you sift through a landfill: for evidence of what people want to bury.

Do you know why they say, 'There's no smoke without fire?' It's not just to give encouragement to people who like fires.

Do you look like the photograph on your book jackets? Authors, I find, seldom do.

Maximilien, cerca di imparare questa verità», disse padre Herivaux, «gli uomini per la maggior parte sono pigri e ti valuteranno secondo la considerazione che tu hai di te stesso. Assicurati dunque che sia alta».

The role needs honest force and honeyed words, and a certain willingness to obfuscate about the intentions of the King of England: and as Wyatt says that to him nothing is ever clear, and no truth is a single truth, he seems the man for the job.

Di che natura è il limite fra la verità e la menzogna? È permeabile e sfocato, poiché è disseminato di voci, dicerie, malintesi e storie alterate. La verità può buttare giù i cancelli, può urlare per strada; se però non è piacevole, gradita e facile da accettare, è condannata a piagnucolare davanti alla porta di servizio.

You wonder what else you have always believed, believed without foundation.

With the words arrives the truth of them.

It is not so much who is guilty, as whose guilt is of service to you. . . we are not priests. We don't want their sort of confession. We are lawyers. We want the truth little by little and only those parts of it we can use.