Philosopher Quotes on Truth

“Indeed rhetoricians are permitted to lie about historical matters so they can speak more subtly. Brutus , 42”

Quidem concessum est rhetoribus ementiri in historiis ut aliquid dicere possint argutius.

“De Natura Deorum–On the Nature of the Gods(45 BC) | Book II, section 2; translation by Francis Brooks”

Variant: For time destroys the fictions of error and opinion, while it confirms the determinations of nature and of truth.

“History is truly the witness of times past, the light of truth, the life of memory, the teacher of life, the messenger of antiquity; whose voice, but the orator's, can entrust her to immortality?”

De Oratore–On the Orator(55 BC) | Book II, Chapter 9, section 36

“That which is most excellent, and is most to be desired by all happy, honest and healthy-minded men, is dignified leisure.”

Pro Publio Sestio ; Chapter XLV

“True glory strikes root, and even extends itself; all false pretensions fall as do flowers, nor can anything feigned be lasting.”

De Officiis–On Duties(44 BC) | Book II, section 43

“It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.”

Il est dangereux d'avoir raison dans des choses où des hommes accrédités ont tort.

“I do not know in the whole history of the world a hero, a worthy man, a prophet, a true Christian, who has not been the victim of the jealous, of a scamp, or of a sinister spirit.”

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 52

“Satire lies about men of letters during their life, and eulogy after their death.”

A Thousand Flashes of French Wit, Wisdom, and Wickedness(1902) | p. 105

“It is the privilege of true genius , and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.”

1750s | "Siècle de Louis XIV", ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1818), "Criticism of the Kantian philosophy"

“"A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity"”

1760s | The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI , by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450

“Real fulfillment, for the man who allows absolutely free rein to his desires, and who much dominate everything, lies in hatred.”

The Rebel(1951) | Part 2: Metaphysical Rebellion

“I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.”

Resistance, Rebellion, and Death(1960) | "Pessimism and Tyranny"

“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”

Letter to Jean-Paul Sartre , 30 June 1952. As quoted in Paris after the Liberation: 1944-1949 by Antony Beevor and Artemis Cooper .

“With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.”

An Absurd Reasoning | Absurd Walls

“There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.”

Absurd Creation | Kirilov

“Do not go outside yourself, return to yourself: truth dwells in the interiority of man and, if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself too . As quoted in De vera religione , XXXIX, 72”

Noli foras ire, in teipsum redi, in interiore homine habitat veritas. Et si tuam naturam mutabilem inveneris, trascende et teipsum .

“The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.”

The City of God(early 400s) | Book II, Chapter 29

“The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known.”

On the Trinity(417) | (Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 24

“The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 616

“If there is something more excellent than the truth , then that is God ; if not, then truth itself is God.”

De Libero Arbitrio(388 - 395)

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.”

Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism

“If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinise it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it.”

Ch. VI: International relations, p. 97

“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”

1910s | Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 27

“Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.”

Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays(1918) | Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians

“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.”

As quoted in The Importance of Living (1937) by Lin Yutang , p. v

“They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.”

Analects

“Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue.”

Analects

“You [a disciple], shall I teach you about knowledge ? What you know, you know, what you don't know, you don't know. This is true knowledge.”

Analects

“If I hear the Way [of truth] in the morning, I am content even to die in that evening.”

Analects

“All, everything that I understand, I understand only because I love.”

Thoughts of Prince Andrew Bk XII, Ch. 16

“Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth. Only deeds of truth, by introducing light into the conscience of each individual, can dissolve the cohesion of error, and detach men one by one from the mass united together by the cohesion of error.”

My Religion (1884), Ch. 12

“Martin's soul grew very very glad. He crossed himself put on his spectacles, and began reading the Gospel just where it had opened; and at the top of the page he read: I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. And at the bottom of the page he read: Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren even these least, ye did it unto me (Matt. xxv). And Martin understood that his dream had come true; and that the Saviour had really come to him that day, and he had welcomed him.”

Where Love Is, God Is " (1885), also translated as "Where Love is, There God is Also" - (full text online)

“For us, with the rule of right and wrong given us by Christ, there is nothing for which we have no standard. And there is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.”

War and Peace(1865–1867; 1869) | Bk. XIV, ch. 18

“Go — take the mother's soul, and learn three truths: Learn What dwells in man, What is not given to man , and What men live by . When thou hast learnt these things, thou shalt return to heaven.”

What Men Live By(1881) | Ch. IV

“What do I know?”

Ch. 16. Of Glory (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877)

“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know.”

... il n'est rien creu si fermement que ce qu'on sçait le moins, ...

“For truth itself does not have the privilege to be employed at any time and in every way; its use, noble as it is, has its circumscriptions and limits.”

Book III | Ch. 13

“The mariner of old said to Neptune in a great tempest, "O God! thou mayest save me if thou wilt, and if thou wilt thou mayest destroy me; but whether or no, I will steer my rudder true."”

Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919) | Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory

“Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.”

Book II | Ch. 11. Of Cruelty (tr. Donald M. Frame)

“Seek truth from thought, not in mouldy books. Look in the sky to find the moon, not in the pool.”

Pebbles, Pearls and Gems of the Orient(1882) | "Knowledge and Wisdom", no. 121

“'Twere better that the spirit which wears not true love as a garment Had not been; its being is but shame.”

A Dictionary of Oriental Quotations(1911) | p. 248, Diwan-i-Shams-i-Tabriz (Nicholson)

Attributed to Rumi:

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I will meet you there.”

Attributed to Rumi:

“What you seek is seeking you.”

Attributed to Rumi:

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.”

One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

“Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”

Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit.

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods .”

Essay to Leo Baeck(1953) | Ideas and Opinions

“Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.”

Einstein and the Poet(1983) | p. 142

“Study and in general the pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.”

Albert Einstein: The Human Side(1979) | Letter to Adrianna Enriques (October 1921), p. 83

“All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”

Revelations of Divine Love, Chapter 27

“Here understand I in truth that all manner of things are made ready for us by the great goodness of God, so far forth that what time we be ourselves in peace and charity, we be verily saved.”

Chapter 40

“Chapter 54”

Variant: Faith is nought else but a right understanding, with true belief and sure trust, of our Being: that we are in God, and God is in us: Whom we see not.

“Beseeching is a true, gracious, lasting will of the soul, oned and fastened into the will of our Lord by the sweet inward work of the Holy Ghost.”

Chapter 41

Attributed to Julian of Norwich:

“Seeking is as good as beholding.”

“The world is everything that is the case.”

Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist .

“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent.”

Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.

“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”

Journal entry (11 October 1914), p. 10e

“It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true. (4.442)”

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus(1922) | Original German: Ein Satz kann unmöglich von sich selbst aussagen, dass er wahr ist.

“The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature.”

Karma Yoga

“The highest truth is this: God is present in all beings. They are His multiple forms. There is no other God to seek. . . . It is a man-making religion that we want. . . . Give up these weakening mysticisms, and be strong. . . . For the next fifty years. ... let all other gods disappear from our minds. This is the only God that is awake, our own race, everywhere His hands, everywhere His feet, everywhere His ears; He covers everything. . . . The first of all worships is the worship of those all around us. ... He alone serves God who serves all other beings.”

Quoted from Will Durant , Our Oriental Heritage.

“All truth is eternal . Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.”

Pearls of Wisdom

“It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity.”

Pearls of Wisdom

“Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.”

Pearls of Wisdom

“The responsibility of the writer as a moral agent is to try to bring the truth about matters of human significance to an audience that can do something about them .”

Powers and Prospects(1996) | p. 56.

“Delivered at the First Annual Maryse Mikhail Lecture “No peace without justice; no justice without truth” The University of Toledo , March 4, 2001. [49]”

2001

“The picture of the world that's presented to the public has only the remotest relation to reality . The truth of the matter is buried under edifice after edifice of lies upon lies .”

Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, (1991)

“It's certainly true that the world is better off without Saddam Hussein, and also without the people who supported him through his worst atrocities, and are now telling us about them.”

25th Anniversary of Coalition for Peace Action, 2004

Attributed to Noam Chomsky:

“How is it we have so much information, but know so little?”

“I came hither [Craigenputtoch] solely with the design to simplify my way of life and to secure the independence through which I could be enabled to remain true to myself.”

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays(1827–1855) | Letter to Goethe , (1828).

“No lie you can speak or act but it will come, after longer or shorter circulation, like a Bill drawn on Nature's Reality, and be presented there for payment, — with the answer, No effects .”

The French Revolution. A History(1837) | Pt. I, Bk. III, ch. 1.

“The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.”

Latter-Day Pamphlets(1850) | Latter Day Pamphlet , No. 8.

“We have oftener than once endeavoured to attach some meaning to that aphorism, vulgarly imputed to Shaftesbury, which however we can find nowhere in his works, that "ridicule is the test of truth ."”

Critical and Miscellaneous Essays(1827–1855) | Voltaire , Foreign Review, (1829) Compare: "How comes it to pass, then, that we appear such cowards in reasoning, and are so afraid to stand the test of ridicule?", Shaftesbury, Characteristics. A Let

“"Do the Duty which lies nearest thee," which thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty will already have become clearer.”

Sartor Resartus(1833–1834) | Bk. II, ch. 9.

“Here I stand. I can do no other.”

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against con

“His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work. Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men’s eyes.”

On War against the Turk (1529)

“Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the truth of the Gospel inviolate.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2

“The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 2

“For Christ is Joy and Sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a Lover of poor sinners, and such a Lover that He gave Himself for us. Now if this is true, and it is true, then are we never justified by our own righteousness.”

Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians(1535) | Chapter 3, verse 20

“What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one. Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core.”

On Revolution (1963), ch. 2

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

The Origins of Totalitarianism(1951) | On " alternate facts "

“The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.”

Crises of the Republic(1969) | "On Violence"

“For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.”

Crises of the Republic(1969) | "Lying in Politics"

Attributed to Hannah Arendt:

“Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.”

“When I am giving the relation of a thing, remember to abstain from altering either in the matter or manner of speaking, so much, as that, if every one, afterwards, should alter as much, it would at last come to be properly false.”

Diary (7 July 1724).

“Love is the active, working principle in all true faith. It is its very soul, without which it is dead. "Faith works by love."”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 396.

“Christian practice is that evidence which confirms every other indication of true godliness.”

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers(1895) | p. 619.

Attributed to Jonathan Edwards:

“True virtue consists in benevolence to being in general.”

Attributed to Jonathan Edwards:

“The world exists only as it is known by mind.”

“If it is correct to say that there will always be rightist temperaments and leftist temperaments, it is nevertheless also correct to say that political philosophy is neither rightist nor leftist; it must simply be true .”

The Twilight of Civilization (1939). London: Sheed & Ward, 1946, p. 41.

“Whereas the intelligence of God is both the cause and the measure of the truth of things, things are both the cause and the measure of the truth of our intelligence.”

Theonas: Conversations of a Sage(1921) [Sheed & Ward, 1933] | p. 9.

“To redeem creation the saint wages war on the entire fabric of creation, with the bare weapons of truth and love.”

The Range of Reason(1952) [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons] | p. 109.

“The day when efficacy would prevail over truth will never come for the Church, for then the gates of hell would have prevailed against her.”

The Peasant of the Garonne(1968) | p. 94.

Attributed to Jacques Maritain:

“Distinguish in order to unite.”

“I am a -living shadow and Thou the Truth... Therefore, my God, Thou art alike shadow and Truth; Thou art alike the image and the Exemplar of myself and all men.”

De Docta Ignorantia(On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

“All we know of the truth is that the absolute truth, such as it is, is beyond our reach.”

De Docta Ignorantia(On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:

“The intellect knows that it is ignorant.”

Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:

“God is the absolute maximum and the absolute minimum at the same time.”

Attributed to Nicholas of Cusa:

“Every searcher into truth knows by some revelation.”

“True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.”

Introduction

“The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.”

La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie)(1960) | Ch. 2, sect. 2

“There is no original truth, only original error.”

Fragments of a Poetics of Fire(1988) | A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books

Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

“Science is the empire of the new.”

Attributed to Gaston Bachelard:

“There is no first knowledge; all knowledge is the result of struggle against earlier error.”

“To be is to be the value of a variable.”

On What There Is

“At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.”

The Web of Belief(1970) | S.4

“"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation " yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.”

1970s | Quine's paradox , in "The Ways of Paradox" in "The Ways of Paradox and other Essays" (1976)

“Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.”

1970s | Philosophy of Logic (1970)

Attributed to W. V. O. Quine:

“Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.”

“God is being, goodness, truth, or the positive in general, but insofar as it is willed and chosen, victory over possible nothingness.”

Wikiquote

“What is important is not reason for its own sake but truth : the value of reason depends on its connection to truth and its ontological roots.”

Ontologia della libertà

Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:

“Each person is a unique interpretation of being.”

Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:

“Aesthetics is the science of the formation of forms.”

Attributed to Luigi Pareyson:

“Truth is given only in interpretation; interpretation is the form of truth.”

“It is my conviction that the character of the human condition, like the character of all life, is "ambiguity": the inseparable mixture of good and evil, of true and false, of creative and destructive forces—both individual and social. Sometimes I have the feeling that [irony] shows some awareness of the ambiguity of life—as long as it does not degenerate into mere cynicism. The awareness of the ambiguity of one's own highest achievements (as well as one's own deepest failures) is a definite symptom of maturity.”

The Ambiguity of Perfection”, Time (May 17, 1963)

“There is no truth without the form of truth, namely justice.”

Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 21

“Without the eros toward truth, theology would not exist.”

Love, Power and Justice(1954) | p. 31

Attributed to Paul Tillich:

“Faith is being grasped by an ultimate concern.”

Attributed to Paul Tillich:

“Doubt is not the opposite of faith; it is one element of faith.”

“Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct, but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.”

Appearance and Reality , preface (1893).

“Eclecticism. Every truth is so true that any truth must be false.”

No. 6.

“True penitence condemns to silence. What a man is ready to recall he would be willing to repeat.”

No. 10.

“We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.”

Aphorisms(1930) | No. 23.

“There are those who so dislike the nude that they find something indecent in the naked truth.”

Aphorisms(1930) | No. 88.