Epistemology

"They breathe truth that breathe their words in pain."

"Methinks the truth should live from age to age, As 'twere retail'd to all posterity, Even to the general all-ending day."

"My man's as true as steel."

"This above all: to thine own self be true,And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man."

"No matter how frequently you visit the realm of dreams, you will inevitably confront the unvarnished truth. However, our truth is so much bitter that not even the entirety of the world's sugar can sweeten it."

"'All great truths begin as blasphemies."

"One of the grand fundamental principles of Mormonism is to receive truth, let it come from whence it may . . . let it come from whence it may . . . We should gather all the good and true principles in the world and treasure them up, or we shall not come out true Mormons."

"Different views of the same truths are seldom disagreeable to men of taste, and are equally useful to beginners with the writings of different authors upon the same subject."

"I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous... All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

"Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed... Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history... Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it."

"If you love the truth, as I think everyone here does — you wouldn’t be listening to this, you wouldn’t be watching this, you wouldn’t be participating in this, you wouldn’t care about this, unless something in you told you that something important was happening here... We are unindicted co-conspirators in his quest to raise a lantern in the halls of power."

"Truth it has been said is the first casualty of war."

"In a comparison of the Soviet and Nazi regimes, the political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote in 1951 that factuality itself "depends for its continued existence upon the existence of the nontotalitarian world." The American diplomat George Kennan made the same point in simpler words in Moscow in 1944: "here men determine what is true and what is false." Is truth nothing more than a convention of power, or can truthful historical accounts resist the gravity of politics? Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sought to master history itself. The Soviet Union was a Marxist state, whose leaders proclaimed themselves to be scientists of history. National Socialism was an apocalyptic version of total transformation, to be realized by men who believed that race and will could slough off the burden of the past. The twelve years of Nazi and the seventy-four years of Soviet power certainly weigh heavily on our ability to evaluate the world. Many people believe that the crimes of the Nazi regime were so great as to stand outside history. This is a troubling echo of Hitler's own belief that will triumphs over facts. Others maintain that the crimes of Stalin, though horrible, were justified by the need to create or defend a modern state. This recalls Stalin's view that history has only one course, which he understood, and legitimates his policies in retrospect."

"If there is no truth, there can be no trust, and nothing new appears in a human vacuum."

"False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil."

"Then the king and the nobles looked at one another; and he began to speak about truth: “Gentlemen, are not women strong? The earth is vast, and heaven is high, and the sun is swift in its course, for it makes the circuit of the heavens and returns to its place in one day. Is not the one who does these things great? But truth is great, and stronger than all things. The whole earth calls upon truth, and heaven blesses it. All God’s works quake and tremble, and with him there is nothing unrighteous. Wine is unrighteous, the king is unrighteous, women are unrighteous, all human beings are unrighteous, all their works are unrighteous, and all such things. There is no truth in them and in their unrighteousness they will perish. But truth endures and is strong forever, and lives and prevails forever and ever. With it there is no partiality or preference, but it does what is righteous instead of anything that is unrighteous or wicked. Everyone approves its deeds, and there is nothing unrighteous in its judgment. To it belongs the strength and the kingship and the power and the majesty of all the ages. Blessed be the God of truth!” When he stopped speaking, all the people shouted and said, “Great is truth, and strongest of all!”"

"It is probable that those who seek after anything whatever, will either find it as they continue the search, will deny that it can be found and confess it to be out of reach, or will go on seeking it. Some have said, accordingly, in regard to the things sought in philosophy, that they have found the truth, while others have declared it impossible to find, and still others continue to seek it."

"Epicurus spoke of all perceptible things as true and as beings. For there is no difference between saying that something is true and saying that it is real; hence, too, in delineating the true and the false he says “That which holds in the way in which it is said to hold is true,” and he says “That which does not hold in the way in which it is said to hold is false.”"

"Whoever is careless with truth in small matters cannot be trusted in important affairs."

"Although I am a typical loner in daily life, my consciousness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has preserved me from feeling isolated."

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

"If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth. So too in religion we are repelled by that confident theological doctrine... but we need not turn aside from the measure of light that comes into our experience showing us a Way through the unseen world."

"The finding of one generation will not serve for the next. It tarnishes rapidly except it be reserved with an ever-renewed spirit of seeking."

"Such a reaction is natural enough—when someone insists a thing has to be true and you are a jerk, a reactionary, a traitor to the species, and worse for not seeing its truth right away, you tend to back off, to put it mildly. But the reaction is in some ways unfortunate. The truth of an idea is not a function of its proponents’ manners. In all fairness, an idea should be evaluated solely on the twin bases of the evidence pertaining to it and its usefulness in uncovering further truths (a theory need not be true to be valuable—it need only lead to truth)."

"When we get to the point, as we one day will, that both sides know that in any outbreak of general hostilities, regardless of the element of surprise, destruction will be both reciprocal and complete, possibly we will have sense enough to meet at the conference table with the understanding that the era of armaments has ended and the human race must conform its actions to this truth or die."

"We have always been aware of this great truth: the final battle against intolerance is to be fought -- not in the chambers of any legislature -- but in the hearts of men."

"Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow...that it passes through"

"The enemy is subtle, how be it we're deceived? When the truth's in our hearts and we still don't believe?"

"For truth has such a face and such a mien, As to be lov'd needs only to be seen."

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."

"Whatever the future may have in store for us, one thing is certain... Human thought will never go backward. When a great truth once gets abroad in the world, no power on earth can imprison it, or prescribe its limits, or suppress it. It is bound to go on till it becomes the thought of the world... Now that it has got fairly fixed in the minds of the few, it is bound to become fixed in the minds of the many, and be supported at last by a great cloud of witnesses, which no man can number and no power can withstand."

"If he will not tell the truth, except when it is for his interest to do so, let us make it for his interest to tell the truth. We can do it by applying to him the same principle of justice that we apply to ourselves... At this point I have one certain test. Mankind are not held together by lies. Trust is the foundation of society. Where there is no truth, there can be no trust, and where there is no trust, there can be no society. Where there is society, there is trust, and where there is trust, there is something upon which it is supported."

"If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth."

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant — Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind —"

"Wine in; truth out."

"It is a truth very certain that, when it is not in our power to determine what is true, we ought to follow what is most probable"

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things."

"Neither the sword of popes, nor the cross, nor the image of death — nothing will halt the march of truth. I wrote what I felt and that is what I preached with trusting spirit. I am convinced that after my destruction the teachings of false prophets will collapse."

"Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails."

"The wayfarer, Perceiving the pathway to truth, Was struck with astonishment. It was thickly grown with weeds. "Ha," he said, "I see that none has passed here In a long time." Later he saw that each weed Was a singular knife. "Well," he mumbled at last, "Doubtless there are other roads.""

"Every gaudy color Is a bit of truth."

"No virtue ever was founded on a lie. The truth, then, at all risks and costs — the truth from the beginning. Make a clean breast to whomsoever you need to make it, and then — face the world."

"Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people — as may be noticed of most young children — does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years."

"I’m starting to understand how little purchase the truth actually affords us in this world."

"It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great."

"To know that we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge."

"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."

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

"Truths … are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors."

"Language has always been important in politics, but language is incredibly important to the present political struggle. Because if you can establish an atmosphere in which information doesn't mean anything, then there is no objective reality. The first show we did, a year ago, was our thesis statement: What you wish to be true is all that matters, regardless of the facts. Of course, at the time, we thought we were being farcical."