Quotes About Truth

He went after it first, using the reductio ad absurdum. This form of argument rests on the truth that if the inevitable conclusions from a set of premises are absurd then it follows logically that at least one of the premises that produced them is absurd.

If subjectivity is eliminated as unimportant, he said, then the entire body of science must be eliminated with it.

Persons tend to think and feel exclusively in one mode or the other and in doing so tend to misunderstand and underestimate what the other mode is all about. But no one is willing to give up the truth as he sees it, and as far as I know, no one now living has any real reconciliation of these truths or modes.

Drifting is what one does when looking at lateral truth. He couldn't follow any known method of procedure to uncover its cause because it was these methods and procedures that were all screwed up in the first place. So he drifted. That was all he could do.

the competence of a speaker has no relevance to the truth

Another study explored the neurobiology of conforming.16 To simplify, a subject is part of a group (where, secretly, the rest are confederates); they are shown "X," then asked, "What did you see?" Everyone else says "Y." Does the subject lie and say "Y" also? Often. Subjects who stuck to their guns with "X" showed amygdala activation.

Furthermore, as shown with neuroimaging, when contemplating mouthwash versus soap, those who had just spoken a lie activated parts of the sensorimotor cortex related to the mouth (i.e., the subjects were more aware of their mouths at the time); those who had written the lie activated the cortical regions mapping onto their hand.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you should know that material things lie. Supercars lie, houses lie, shiny stuff lie. Men lie, women lie. But remember this: it is IMPOSSIBLE for the eyes to lie.

Complex and original people know that truth is rarely simple, almost never all of this or all of that, but elusive minglings and mixtures, evolving shapes, with tinctures of irony and paradox.

The Heavenly City outshines Rome," Augustine wrote. "There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of life, eternity.

Es gibt immer einen Punkt dabei, wo man nicht mehr weiß, ob man lügt oder ob das, was man erfunden hat, wahrer ist als man selber.

Ich weiß jetzt nichts von Rätseln. Alles geschieht: Das ist die ganze Weisheit.

Die Wahrheit ist eben kein Kristall, den man in die Tasche stecken kann, sondern eine unendliche Flüssigkeit, in die man hineinfällt.

There is, in short, no great idea that stupidity could not put to its own uses; it can move in all directions, and put on all the guises of truth. The truth, by comparison, has only one appearance and only one path, and is always at a disadvantage.

In der Wissenschaft kommt es alle paar Jahre vor, daß etwas, das bis dahin als Fehler galt, plötzlich alle Anschauungen umkehrt oder daß ein unscheinbarer und verachteter Gedanke zum Herrscher über ein neues Gedankenreich wird.

The truth is not a crystal that can be slipped into one's pocket, but an endless current into which one falls headlong.

The fact was that belief in them had to be there before they themselves could be there; if one did not look at the world with the world's eyes, the world already in one's own gaze, it fell apart into meaningless details that live as sadly far apart from each other as the stars in the night-sky.

Die Wirkung eines großen und ganzen Mannes ist wie die der Schönheit: sie verträgt so wenig eine Leugnung, wie man einen Ballon anbohren darf oder einer Statue einen Hut auf den Kopf setzen.

Seiner größten Hingabe an die Wissenschaft war es niemals gelungen, ihn vergessen zu machen, daß die Schönheit und Güte der Menschen von dem kommen, was sie glauben, und nicht von dem, was sie wissen.

Ein Wissender weiß, dass nichts wahr ist und die ganze Wahrheit erst am Ende aller Tage liegt.

Ich trage meine Sache vor, wenn ich auch weiss, dass sie nur ein Teil der Wahrheit ist und ich würde sie ebenso vortragen, wenn ich wüsste, dass sie falsch ist, weil gewisse Irrtümer Stationen der Wahrheit sind.

For when we lie nowadays it is not so much out of weakness as out of a conviction that a man cannot prevail in life unless he is able to lie.

Chaque vérité éternelle existe en double, en multiples exemplaires.

It is reality that awakens possibilities, and nothing would be more perverse than to deny it.