Quotes About Truth

No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy... Understand that I shall never alter my ways, not even if I have to die many times.

when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.

Philosophy is the highest music.

Is there a perfect world?

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

Strange times are these in which we live when old and young are taught falsehoods in school. And the person that dares to tell the truth is called at once a lunatic and fool

But Above all things truth beareth away the victory

What shall we say about those spectators, then, who can see a plurality of beautiful things, but not beauty itself, and who are incapable of following if someone else tries to lead them to it, and who can see many moral actions, but not morality itself, and so on? That they only ever entertain beliefs, and do not know any of the things they believe?

And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man –whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyze the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation.

let the speaker speak truly and the judge decide justly.

it's better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just.

And Agathon said, It is probable, Socrates, that I knew nothing of what I had said. And yet spoke you beautifully, Agathon, he said.

Then the lover, who is true and no counterfeit, must of necessity be loved by his love.

for the unexamined life is not worth living.

Appearance tyrannizes over truth.

And isn't it a bad thing to be deceived about the truth, and a good thing to know what the truth is? For I assume that by knowing the truth you mean knowing things as they really are.

Love is a madness produced by an unsatisfiable rational desire to understand the ultimate truth about the world.

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth. -Plato, philosopher (427-347 BCE)

The truth is that we isolate a particular kind of love and appropriate it for the name of love, which really belongs to a wider whole.

True opinions are a fine thing and do all sorts of good so long as they stay in their place; but they will not stay long. They run away from a man's mind, so they are not worth much until you tether them by working out the reason. Once they are tied down, they become knowledge, and are stable.