Quotes About Truth

The compelling drive to get at the truth is what improves us all as psychologists and is part and parcel of intellectual integrity. But I do urge that we not let the drive for honesty put blinders on us and cut off our range of vision so that we miss the very thing we set out the understand - namely, the living human being.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

To say that everything without exception is going straight to hell is not an alternative vision but only an inversion of the mainstream's 'everything's fine.'

We seek for truth in ourselves; in our neighbours, and in its essential nature. We find it first in ourselves by severe self scrutiny, then in our neighbours by compassionate indulgence, and, finally, in its essential nature by that direct vision which belongs to the pure in heart.

If you are a great news organization, you can't have the best obtainable version of the truth if your vision and your scale is reduced to a fraction of its former self.

As long as people are living their truth or their vision, whether they're activists or not, that's the important thing.

Lucian Freud's career affirms that the only thing an artist can do is remain true to whatever vision, (lack of) talent, or ideas that happened to pick them in order to be made known to the world.

I don't think there is ever objective biography. Our vision of our subject is always shaped by who we are. So I do, of course, think the biographer's view is always something to keep in mind.

Flannery O'Connor quote: "The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty. People do this with teenagers, spouses, addicts, even themselves. Its opposite is wise compassion, which means caring about the person but also giving him or her a loving truth bomb when needed.

Sharing difficult truths might come with a cost — the need to face them — but there's also a reward: freedom. The truth releases us from shame.

Honesty is stronger medicine than sympathy, which may console but often conceals.

Het is niet alsof we een kijkje nemen in die duistere krochten, het licht aandoen en een stel kakkerlakken aantreffen. Vuurvliegjes houden ook van duisternis. Er is ook schoonheid op die plekken. Maar we moeten ernaar kijken om die te kunnen zien.

If you ever want proof that what people present online is a prettier version of their lives, become a therapist and Google your patients.

Do they consider what they're saying to be the only version of the story—the "accurate" version—or do they know that theirs is just one of many ways to tell it?

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

There are many ways to tell a story, and if I've learned anything as a therapist, it's that most people are what therapists call "unreliable narrators." That's not to say that they purposely mislead. It's more that every story has multiple threads, and they tend to leave out the strands that don't jibe with their perspectives.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls." But he also said this: "Who looks inside, awakes.

Above all, I didn't want to fall into the trap that Buddhists call idiot compassion — an apt phrase, given John's worldview. In idiot compassion, you avoid rocking the boat to spare people's feelings, even though the boat needs rocking and your compassion ends up being more harmful than your honesty.

Wendell once pointed out that we talk to ourselves more than we'll talk to any other person over the course of our lives but that our words aren't always kind or true or helpful

The truth comes with a cost: the need to face reality.

the most powerful truths—the ones people take the most seriously—are those they come to, little by little, on their own.

When you stop tossing junk into the void—words, words, and more words—something important rises to the surface.

Mas do que temos tanto medo? Não é como se fossemos espiar naqueles cantos escuros, acender a luz e descobrir um bando de baratas. Os vagalumes também adoram a escuridão. Existe beleza nesses lugares. Mas é preciso olhar ali dentro para vê-la.