Quotes About Truth

It takes courage to tell the truth about what you are committed to. Most of us are not completely, unshakably committed to having a truly marvelous career or marriage or anything else. For the most part, we are committed to comfort, low risk, and equilibrium. Remember, wanting/wishing and commitment are two completely different domains.

I was responsible for a clause that is now standard in all studio DVDs, the disclaimer that states that the studio is in no way responsible for any of the content or comments made by people appearing in the interviews on the disc. It is hard to overstate the importance of this clause: It enables those supplementary DVD segments to be more than mere puff pieces but a valuable form of oral history. People can tell their differing, multiple versions and perceptions of the truth

Selfhood is a heavy, hardly translucent medium, which cuts off most of the light of reality and distorts what little it permits to pass.' This is Huxley's central notion [of Grey Eminence], that we should 'stand out of our own light' in order to see the eternal truths.

In truth, Derrida has always been preoccupied (in the strongest senses of that word) by what precedes or exceeds language.

Nicholas Shakespeare

He tells not a half truth, but a truth and a half

Truth smells like Chinese food and sweat.

I've got some words of wisdom.

Oh, fuck it, I'm a monster, I admit it!

Michel Foucault believed that speech was truly free only when the weak took a risk and used it against the strong: 'In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

The religious do not say that they are defending the truth from libellous attack, because in their hearts they know that the truth of the holy books cannot be defended. Instead, like celebrities' lawyers trying to hide secrets, they threaten the gains made in the struggle for religious toleration by saying that those who ask searching questions of religion must be punished for invading the privacy of the pious.

truth of Orwell's remark that 'So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot.

Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed down from above and never telling what seems to him the whole of the truth.

they illustrated an unacknowledged truth about contemporary writing: reporters, editors and artists in Britain, America and most of Europe are not afraid of politicians. They are frightened of Islamists, and do not run cartoons that might offend them. They are frightened of oligarchs and CEOs, and worry about libel and the ability of the wealthy to bend the ear of their proprietors. But they are not frightened about leaking the secrets or criticising the actions of elected governments.

names of better and braver people than Assange could ever be in Afghanistan, China, Ethiopia and Belarus for their dictatorial enemies to find and charge with collaboration with the US.

parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy.

Citizens exercised parrhesia, which translates as 'all speech', or sometimes 'true speech'.

Richard Feynman said that the differences between true sciences and the pseudo-sciences – a category that includes the management-speak of the business schools – was that the former try to be honest, while the latter do not.

readers rarely accept arguments that challenge their interests. Even if they acknowledge at some level that there may be truth in what you say, they will blank out the unwelcome knowledge.

Writers write badly when they have something to hide. Clarity makes their shaky assumptions plain to the readers – and to themselves. By keeping it foggy they save themselves the trouble of spelling out their beliefs and recommendations for the future. For academics, of all people, this is a disreputable way of going about business, but one that has many uses. Obscurantism spared the theorists who emerged from the grave of Marxism the pain of testing dearly held beliefs and prejudices

authority is no guarantee of truth, if authority is not tested.

Writers write badly when they have something to hide.

Writers write badly when they have something to hide. Clarity makes their shaky assumptions plain to the readers – and to themselves.

I wish we all didn't have a story. –Karen