Quotes About Truth

People naturally prefer you to lie to them rather than refuse them your help," he writes.

In his early twenties Cicero wrote the first two volumes of a work on "invention"—that is to say, the technique of finding ideas and arguments for a speech; in it he noted that the most important thing was "that we do not recklessly and presumptuously assume something to be true." This resolute uncertainty was to be a permanent feature of his thought.

God, or nature, has no use for such categories as good and bad.

Telling the truth to people who misunderstand you is generally promoting a falsehood, isn't it?

We only see what we want to see.

Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.

There are few things in the world that we don't know. Science has explained everything away.

There are two worlds. The world you understand and the world you don't. These worlds exist side by side, sometimes only centimeters apart, and the great majority of people spend their entire lives in one without being aware of the other. It's like living in one side of a mirror: you think there is nothing on the other side until one day a switch is thrown and suddenly the mirror is transparent. You see the other side.

One can think of the truth as eine vertiefung – a sort of deep valley which may not be visible from a distance but which will come upon you quite suddenly. There are many ways to arrive there.

Robert Pinkerton used to say that a lie was like a dead coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells.

Alex watched her leave. So it was true what Yassen had said. Her last question had proved it. He knew who he was. The son of a contract killer.

Robert Pinkerton used to say that a lie was like a dead coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells. - Frederick Chase

If you've ever read the French philosopher Alain Badiou, you'll know that he defines jokes as a type of rupture that opens up truths.

From Pünd's experience, people who were so insistent on the truth were very rarely telling it.

a lie was like a dead coyote. The longer you leave it, the more it smells.

I have spoken to you before of the nature of human wickedness, my friend. How it is the small lies and evasions which nobody sees or detects but which can come together and smother you like the fumes in a house fire.

But such gossip cannot be confronted. Rumours and malicious gossip are like bindweed. They cannot be cut back, even with the sword of truth. I can, however, offer you this comfort. Given time, they will wither and die of their own volition.

know you're only doing your job, Mr Hawthorne, and you don't really care how you get your results. I was there when you were giving your talk and it struck me then that you have absolutely no heart at all. You don't believe in the law.

Why would I believe someone who spends his entire life making stuff up?

That's the thing about funerals. They're completely hypocritical. Everyone says how wonderful the deceased was, how kind, how generous when, deep down, they know it's not true.

But at the same time I recalled something Holmes had said to me many times, namely that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

It meant nothing to me. You can stick a piece of metal on a coward and a liar but it won't change what he is.

When people keep secrets, those secrets have a nasty way of festering. They can turn into poison. They can kill.

know the truth now and it's that Richard betrayed us,' she said. 'He looked after us. He gave us money. He got me work. He pretended to be my friend. But all along he'd been lying to us. He knew perfectly well what had happened at Long Way Hole. If he hadn't been such a coward, Charlie would still be alive.