Quotes About Truth

When we presume to lie for the benefit of others, we have decided that we are the best judges of how much they should understand about their own lives—about how they appear, their reputations, or their prospects in the world.

A wasteland of embarrassment and social upheaval can be neatly avoidedby following a single precept in life: Do not lie

Of course, the liar often imagines that he does no harm as long as his lies go undetected. But the one lied to almost never shares this view. The moment we consider our dishonesty from the point of view of those we lie to, we recognize that we would feel betrayed if the roles were reversed.

Many religious moderates have taken the apparent high road of pluralism, asserting the equal validity of all faiths, but in doing so they neglect to notice the irredeemably sectarian truth claims of each.

There is, in fact, no worldview more reprehensible in its arrogance than that of a religious believer: the creator of the universe takes an interest in me, approves of me, loves me, and will reward me after death; my current beliefs, drawn from scripture, will remain the best statement of the truth until the end of the world; everyone who disagrees with me will spend eternity in hell….

In those circumstances where we deem it obviously necessary to lie, we have generally determined that the person to be deceived is both dangerous and unreachable by any recourse to the truth. In other words, we have judged the prospects of establishing a genuine relationship with him to be nonexistent.

People lie so that others will form beliefs that are not true. The more consequential the beliefs—that is, the more a person's well-being demands a correct understanding of the world or of other people's opinions—the more consequential the lie.

It should go without saying that these rival belief systems [Judaism, Islam, Christianity] are all equally uncontaminated by evidence.

Every lie is an assault on the autonomy of those we lie to.

If there is any kernel of truth in the religions we so deplore,and they are just a carnival of errors,the truth is that it's possible to sink into the present moment in such a way as to find it sacred and to cease to have a problem.

You don't get anything worth getting by pretending to know things you don't know.

Honesty can force any dysfunction in your life to the surface. Are you in an abusive relationship? A refusal to lie to others – How did you get that bruise? – would oblige you to come to grips with this situation very quickly. Do you have a problem with drugs or alcohol? Lying is the lifeblood of addiction. If we have no recourse to lies, our lives can unravel only so far without others noticing. Telling the truth can also reveal ways in which we want to grow but haven't.

We often behave in ways that are guaranteed to make us unhappy. Many of us spend our lives marching with open eyes toward remorse, regret, guilt, and disappointment.And nowhere do our injuries seem more casually self-inflicted, or the suffering we create more disproportionate to the needs of the moment, than in the lies we tell to other human beings. Lying is the royal road to chaos.

what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence."15

I don't always communicate the truth in the way that I want to—but one of the strengths of telling the truth is that it remains open for elaboration. If what you say in the heat of the moment isn't quite right, you can amend it. I have learned that I would rather be maladroit, or even rude, than dishonest.

Mentir es, casi por definición, negarse a cooperar con los demás. Mentir combina en un único acto la falta de confianza y de honradez. Es al mismo tiempo un fallo de comprensión y una falta de voluntad de ser comprendido. Mentir es dar un paso atrás en la relación.

The experience was not of love growing but of its being no longer obscured.

How would your relationships change if you resolved never to lie again? What truths about yourself might suddenly come into view? What kind of person would you become? And how might you change the people around you? It is worth finding out.

Nothing is more sacred than the facts.

Believing a given proposition is a matter of believing that it faithfully represents some state of the world, and this fact yields some immediate insights into the standards by which our beliefs should function. In particular, it reveals why we cannot help but value evidence and demand that propositions about the world logically cohere.

Few of us are murderers or thieves, but we have all been liars.

Consciousness is the one thing in this universe that cannot be an illusion

Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all—and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature.

What we call reality is just when we all agree about our hallucinations.