Quotes About Truth

when writing a biography, you can't trust certainties. Just as you're about to pounce on something that will condemn you to a tidy answer, pooooofff! It vanishes.

There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.

Everybody knows, she thought, that we have a skeleton underneath our skin; there's no reason to show it

Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.

Men are very sensitive, Mma Makutsi. You would not always think it to look at them, but they are. They do not like you to point out that they are wrong, even when they are. That is the way things are, Mma--it just is.

All suspects should be given the chance to telephone their lawyers or their mothers, and it would not be surprising if they chose to call their mothers. After all, your mother is fall more likely to believe in your innocence than your lawyer.

Mma Ramotswe did not like lying, but sometimes it was necessary, particularly when faced with people who were promoted beyond their talents.

Charming people, when not actively shooting one another, a friend had once said, which was so unkind, but, like so many unkind comments, had a grain of truth in it. They did shoot one another and had been doing so for centuries. They did bicker over and brood on long-dead history--or history that should be long dead. The problem with history was that it refused to lie down and die.

There are many people who are frightened of something or other, Mma, she said. Even here in Botswana there are people who are frightened. They had looked at each other without saying anything. Each knew what the other meant; each knew that there were things that people preferred not to acknowledge not to admit, lest the admission encourage that which needed no encouragement.

But remember, that for every cheating wife in Botswana, there are five hundred and fifty cheating husbands. Mma Makutsi whistled. That is an amazing figure, she said. Where did you read that? Nowhere, chuckled Mma Ramotswe. I made it up. But that doesn't stop it from being true.

Truth had a way of coming out on top—and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day.

There are lies you tell with your lips and lies you don't need your lips for. And once people start telling lies, then they become like spiders who weave their web about themselves. They become stuck-caught by the lies all about them. And then they can't get out of the web, no matter how hard they try.

It's just that I think people should be…well, a bit more honest. We don't like being told half-truths. Or being lied to…People can tell, you know. They know when they're being lied to. Politicians find that out – eventually.

You did not squeeze hands when you lied; it could not be done.

Be very careful of anything that looks too good to be true. Because if it looks too good to be true, that's probably because that's exactly what it is!

Big Lou sighed. "The Devil's just a tattie-bogle. And there's no such place as Hell, Bob." Bob hesitated. "No, I don't think there is. But why did they tell us all that?" "It was a useful threat, Bob. Fear works. It secured compliance.

Mother was right, you know. It's an odd thing, isn't it: you never want your mother to be right, but the older you get, the more right you realise your mother was. All those things that mothers say, all those annoying things, turn out to be right.

She liked such stories because it helped people to believe in justice, which we had to believe in if we were not simply to give up in the face of adversity.

Everything was so clear-cut to the student mind; the truth was passionately proclaimed, rather than half-believed in, which was how more experienced people thought of things. The more experienced had generally discovered that there were no longer any privileged, exclusive truths – there were just the various shades of possibility.

I think that may just be coincidence," Ulf said. "Sometimes we stumble over the truth. We think we find it, but it finds us.

People were only too ready to believe things that were manifestly untrue. When it came to remarks that portrayed others in a bad light, people were happy to believe things that showed others to be weak or flawed in some way: we believed that of them because it made us feel better; it was as simple as that.

The more that people are in the wrong, she thought, the louder their protestations on being brought to book.

Every story has two sides. So far, we've only heard one. The stupid side."   LIFE

But there were many things that one did not really believe that one did not want to disbelieve, just in case they might be true – which they clearly were not, of course.