Quotes About Truth

For me, the lessons were irrefutable. Iran illustrated beyond any doubt that the United States was a nation laboring to deny the truth of its role in the world. It seemed incomprehensible that we could have been so misinformed about the shah and the tide of hatred that had surged against him.

It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and the myths that surround it.

Never believe governments,' she wrote, 'not any of them, not a word they say; keep an untrusting eye on all they do.

I love long regarded my country as a secret, as a land half-won, its story half-told. It was as if the past was another country, mysterious and unexplained. 'Australian history' either was not taught or was not required for 'higher learning'. Contemporary history was unheard of. Black history was ridiculed. Historians and politicians, more concerned with imperial propriety than truth, covered up and distorted.

though there is no question, as it turns out, that there can be a great deal of difference between belief and truth; yet, given a choice, either will do at two in the morning.

but I do believe one ought to recognize the irreversible nature of reality, particularly if one wants to avoid it.

To live in delusion is to live in the comfort of ideology.

A civilization unable to differentiate between illusion and reality is usually believed to be at the tail end of its existence.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.

The greatest thing a human being ever does in this world is to see something... To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth.

Imperfection is in some sort essential to all that we know in life.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

To speak and act truth with constancy and precision is nearly as difficult, and perhaps as meretorious, as to speak it under intimidation or penalty

It is a wiser, more generous, more noble thing to remember and point out the perfect words, than to invent poorer ones, wherewith to encumber temporarily the world.

Now observe; if the artist does not understand the sacredness of the truth of Impression, and supposes that, once quitting hold of his first thought, he may by Philosophy compose something prettier than he saw and mightier than he felt, it is all over with him. Every such attempt at composition will be utterly abortive, and end in something that is neither true nor fanciful; something geographically useless, and intellectually absurd.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

You may trust to the truth of my sympathy; but you must remember that I am engaged in the investigation of enormous religious and moral questions, in the history of nations; and that your feelings, or my own, or anybody else's, at any particular moment, are of very little interest to me,--not from want of sympathy, but from the small proportion the individuality bears to the whole subject of my enquiry.

A book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to preserve it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or beautifully helpful

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

Every advance in our acuteness of perception will show us something thing new; but the old and first-discerned thing will still be there, not falsified, only modified and enriched by the new perceptions, becoming continually more beautiful in its harmony with them, and more approved as a part of the infinite truth.

The more I think of it, the more I find this conclusion impressed upon me, that the greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way.