Quotes About Truth

Appearances are not held to be a clue to the truth. But we seem to have no other.

Before you find out who you are, you have to figure out who you aren't..

When you can look a thing dead in the eye, acknowledge that it exists, call it exactly what it is, and decide what role it will take in your life then, my Beloved, you have taken the first step toward your freedom.

from a Second Vatican Council document: "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man find true light.

from a Second Vatican Council document: "The truth is that only in the mystery of the incarnate Word does the mystery of man find true light."4

In the Bible, God uses several different types of writing to convey his truth. There are narratives (often with commentary), preaching and exhortation (as in the prophets), laws and regulations, the distilled wisdom of Proverbs, philosophical discussion (as in Job and Ecclesiastes), and poetry (as in the Psalms). Poetry has its own ways.

Contextualism is only the flipside of logocentrism.

He who thanks but with the lips Thanks but in part; The full, the true Thanksgiving Comes from the heart.

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned.

Na die tocht leken zijn herinneringen meer op verzinsels dan op feiten, zei hij en hij was verbitterd omdat de wereld veranderd was en geen rekening met zijn verleden en zijn gemis had gehouden.

Can I admit to myself that I know about, say, the goodness of love and the evil of murder, while not admitting to myself that I know about the goodness of God and the evil of refusing Him?

A secular person treats as the Highest Standard something that isn't the Highest Standard.

Of course, for whatever is amiss in these pages (and there will be much), the blame is mine. But permit me to be grateful if anything in them is true.

We are put together in such a way that although we can be pushed and pulled and drowsied by flickering images, we cannot be satisfied by them; we know too much even in oblivion. Fallow knowledge troubles our sleep. We lie under the prickling enchantment of the image carved into our hearts, which is stronger than the counterspell and can never be quite scratched out.

If he makes humanity God and yet cries out against God's inhumanity, it is clear who has really been accused.

Like other people, anthropologists may see only what they want to see, even when what they want to see is nothing.

How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from prior knowledge. We just know it. The knowledge is "underived.

That is how sin works. Having nothing in itself by which to convince, on what other resources but good and truth can it draw to make itself attractive and plausible? We must use the natural law to recognize the abuse of the natural law; there is nothing else to use.

Depraved conscience turns out to be as different from genuine ignorance as it is from honest recognition.

I believe in civility. But it is not a requirement of civility to pretend there is no war.

We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. GEORGE ORWELL

To penetrate the unknown, the mind must begin with what is known already. George Orwell wrote that "We have now sunk to a depth at which re-statement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." This book is an attempt at re-statement.

When, despite considerable intelligence, a thinker cannot think straight, it becomes very likely that he cannot face his thoughts.

Yet our common moral knowledge is as real as arithmetic, and probably just as plain. Paradoxically, maddeningly, we appeal to it even to justify wrongdoing; rationalization is the homage paid by sin to guilty knowledge.