Truth quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside truth — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
"The truth must essentially be regarded as in conflict with this world; the world has never been so good, and will never become so good that the majority will desire the truth."
"Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth."
"Fiction is the truth inside the lie."
"If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance."
"A man should be upright, not kept upright."
"I believe in general in a dualism between facts and the ideas of those facts in human heads."
"Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can exist apart from religious principle."
"For men in earnest have no time to waste In patching fig-leaves for the naked truth."
"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies."
"General abstract truth is the most precious of all blessings; without it, man is blind; it is the eye of reason."
"I speak the truth, not my fill of it, but as much as I dare speak; and I dare to do so a little more as I grow old."
"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."
"truth outlives pain, as the soul does life."
"Lying is done with words and also with silence."
"What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup."
"I seek the truth...it is only persistence in self-delusion and ignorance that does harm."
"I have no fault to find with those who teach geometry. That science is the only one which has not produced sects; it is founded on analysis and on synthesis and on the calculus; it does not occupy itself with the probable truth; moreover it has the same method in every country."
"Because we have for millenia made moral, aesthetic, religious demands on the world, looked upon it with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking, this world has gradually become so marvelously variegated, frightful, meaningful, soulful, it has acquired color - but we have been the colorists: it is the human intellect that has made appearances appear and transported its erroneous basic conceptions into things."
"A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar."
