Quotes About Truth

Secrecy begets tyranny.

If you've got the truth you can demonstrate it. Talking doesn't prove it.

Does history record any case in which the majority was right?

The slickest way in the world to lie is to tell the right amount of truth at the right time-and then shut up.

Everybody lies about sex.

It's not enough to be able to lie with a straight face; anybody with enough gall to raise on a busted flush can do that. The first way to lie artistically is to tell the truth — but not all of it. The second way involves telling the truth, too, but is harder: Tell the exact truth and maybe all of it…but tell it so unconvincingly that your listener is sure you are lying.

Autobiography is usually honest but it is never truthful.

Correct morality can only be derived from what man is — not from what do-gooders and well-meaning aunt Nellies would like him to be.

Many older physicians had gone to their graves calling Pasteur a liar, a fool, or worse---and without examining evidence which their "common sense" told them was impossible.

History has the relation to truth that theology has to religion — ie., none to speak of

The hardest part about gaining any new idea is sweeping out the false idea occupying that niche. As long as that niche is occupied, evidence and proof and logical demonstration get nowhere. But once the niche is emptied of the wrong idea that has been filling it — once you can honestly say, 'I don't know', then it becomes possible to get at the truth.

Once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind.

Come Judgment Day, we may find that Mumbo Jumbo the God of the Congo was the Big Boss all along.

That God is in truth the sort of bloodthirsty paranoid Who would rend to bits forty-two children for the crime of sassing one of his priests. Don't ask me about the Front Office's policies; I just work here.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

Call it that if you like. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Jill, of all the nonsense that twists the world, the concept of 'altruism' is the worst. People do what they want to do, every time.

All revelations are personal, that's why all revelations are suspect.

I've never been able to understand 'faith' myself, nor to see how a just God could expect his creatures to pick the one true religion out of an infinitude of false ones—by faith alone. It strikes me as a sloppy way to run an organization, whether a universe or a smaller one.

Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them.

What is 'truth'?" Mike asked. ("What is Truth?" asked a Roman judge, and washed his hands of a troublesome question. Jubal wished that he could do likewise.)

My child, a true-confession story should never be tarnished by any taint of truth.

A paradox may be paradoctored.

I had the unsettling feeling that I had been completely mistaken as to the very nature of the world I was in, as if every part was something wildly different from what it appeared to be...