Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosopher, Writer
"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed."
Truth quotes
Truth
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Marcus Aurelius
Philosopher, Emperor
"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
Malcolm X
Civil Rights Activist, Minister
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole."
Socrates
Philosopher
"Most people, including ourselves, live in a world of relative ignorance. We are even comfortable with that ignorance, because it is all we know. When we first start facing truth, the process may be frightening, and many people run back to their old lives. But if you continue to seek truth, you will eventually be able to handle it better. In fact, you want more! It's true that many people around you now may think you are weird or even a danger to society, but you don't care. Once you've tasted the truth, you won't ever want to go back to being ignorant"
Galileo Galilei
Astronomer, Physicist
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."
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Truth quotes (page 1 of 158)
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"Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth."
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"Young people love what is interesting and odd, no matter how true or false it is. More mature minds love what is interesting and odd about truth. Fully mature intellects, finally, love truth, even when it appears plain and simple, boring to the ordinary person; for they have noticed that truth tends to reveal its highest wisdom in the guise of simplicity."
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"There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true."
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"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
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"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself."
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"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
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"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
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"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth."
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"There are no facts, only interpretations."
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"Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery."
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"Truth always rests with the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion, while the strength of a majority is illusory, formed by the gangs who have no opinion - and who, therefore, in the next instant (when it is evident that the minority is the stronger) assume its opinion ... while Truth again reverts to a new minority."
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"Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs."
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"If the truth shall kill them, let them die."
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"Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear."
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"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
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"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
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"Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom."
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"Truth between candid minds can never do harm."
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"You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it."
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"Spirituality is natural goodness. God is not a person; God is a presence personified in us. Spirituality is not a thing; it is the atmosphere of God's Presence, goodness, truth, and beauty."
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