Truth

If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth. ~~ Hans Reichenbach

An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains. ~~ Henri Frederic Amiel

What plays the mischief with the truth is that men will insist upon the universal application of a temporary feeling or opinion. ~~ Herman Melville

Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error. ~~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Habit with him was all the test of truth,It must be right: I've done it from my youth. ~~ George Crabbe

A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent. ~~ William Blake

'Tis strange -- but true; for truth is always strange;
Stranger than fiction. ~~ George Noel Gordon, Lord Byron

It is our will
That thus enchains us to permitted ill --
We might be otherwise -- we might be all
We dream of happy, high majestical.
Where is the love, beauty and truth we seek,
But in our mind? ~~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Yearning is not only a good way to go crazy but also a pretty good place to hide out from hard truth. ~~ Jay Cocks

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions. ~~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented. ~~ Georges Braque

Political language . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ~~ George Orwell (see Said Who?)

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it. ~~ Thomas Cooper

Truth or tact? You have to choose. Most times they are not compatible. ~~ Eddie Cantor

A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune. ~~ Henry Ward Beecher

Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough, and . it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor. ~~ Robert Frost

Kiss the hand of him who can renounce what he has publicly taught, when convicted of his error; and who, with heartfelt joy, embraces the truth, though with the sacrifice of favorite opinions. ~~ Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who speaks the truth must have one foot in the stirrup. ~~ Armenian proverb

Don't let your special character and values, the secret that you know and no one else does, the truth -- don't let that get swallowed up by the great chewing complacency. ~~ Meryl Streep

I must say the biggest lesson you can learn in life, or teach your children, is that life is not castles in the skies, happily ever after. The biggest lesson we have to give our children is truth. ~~ Goldie Hawn

Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. ~~ Andre Gide

Truth lies within a little and certain compass, but error is immense. ~~ William Blake

Gossip needn't be false to be evil -- there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around. ~~ Frank A. Clark

The truth is more important than the facts. ~~ Frank Lloyd Wright

The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. ~~ Herbert Agar

It [a letter] contains a misleading impression, not a lie. It was being economical with the truth. ~~ Sir Robert Armstrong

A platitude is simply a truth repeated until people get tired of hearing it. ~~ Stanley Baldwin

It is unfortunate, considering that enthusiasm moves the world, that so few enthusiasts can be trusted to tell the truth. ~~ Stanley Baldwin

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth. ~~ Lillian Hellman

He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. ~~ Charles Peguy

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world. ~~ George Bernard Shaw

If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians. ~~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. ~~ Robert Brault

We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past. ~~ Madame Chiang Kai-shek

To be persuasive, we must be believable. To be believable, we must be credible. To be credible, we must be truthful. ~~ Edward R. Murrow

Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome. ~~ Thomas Hobbes

If a person is to get the meaning of life he must learn to like the facts about himself -- ugly as they may seem to his sentimental vanity -- before he can learn the truth behind the facts. And the truth is never ugly. ~~ Eugene O'Neill

Some disguised deceits counterfeit truth so perfectly that not to be taken in by them would be an error of judgment. ~~ La Rochefoucauld

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. ~~ Mark Twain

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also. ~~ Carl G. Jung

Reason means truth and those who are not governed by it take the chance that someday the sunken fact will rip the bottom out of their boat. ~~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

When one has one's hand full of truth it is not always wise to open it. ~~ French proverb

It is one of the maladies of our age to profess a frenzied allegiance to truth in unimportant matters, to refuse consistently to face her where graver issues are at stake. ~~ Norman Douglas

The terrible thing about the quest for truth is that you find it. ~~ Remy de Gourmont

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~~ H. L. Mencken

It takes two to speak the truth -- one to speak and another to hear. ~~ Henry David Thoreau

Truth never damages a cause that is just. ~~ Mohandas K. Gandhi

You can always get the truth from a politician after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the Presidency. ~~ Joe Moore

Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time. ~~ Benjamin Disraeli

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. ~~ John F. Kennedy

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth. ~~ Aesop

Democracy is a constant tension between truth and half-truth and, in the arsenal of truth, there is no greater weapon than fact. ~~ Lyndon Baines Johnson

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more, as I grow older. ~~ Montaigne

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent. ~~ Will Durant

I seem to have been like a child playing on the sea shore, finding now and then a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me. ~~ Isaac Newton

The man who fears no truths has nothing to fear from lies. ~~ Thomas Jefferson

The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls. ~~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth. ~~ Katherine Mansfield

Those who set out nobly to be their brother's keeper sometimes end up by becoming his jailer. Every emancipation has in it the seeds of a new slavery, and every truth easily becomes a lie. ~~ I. F. Stone

God made Truth with many doors to welcome every believer who knocks on them. ~~ Kahlil Gibran

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth -- anonymously and posthumously. ~~ Thomas Sowell

The reason that truth is stranger than fiction is that fiction has to have a rational thread running through it in order to be believable, whereas reality may be totally irrational. ~~ Sydney J. Harris

Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. ~~ Winston Churchill

Absolute truth is incompatible with an advanced state of society. ~~ Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis

Truthfulness with me is hardly a virtue. I cannot discriminate between truths that and those that don't need to be told. ~~ Margot Asquith

No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragment, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. ~~ William Osler