Epistemology

"To love truth, and to serve under its banner, come what may, that is courage truly, which will endure and stand the test of endless ages."

"A thirsty ambition for truth and virtue, and a frenzy to conquer all lies and vices which are not recognized as such nor desire to be; herein consists the heroic spirit of the philosopher."

"All religions are incorporated in the principle of Truth, Simplicity and Love."

"Every major U.S. war of the last several decades has begun the same way: the U.S. government fabricates an inflammatory, emotionally provocative lie which large U.S. media outlets uncritically treat as truth while refusing at air questioning or dissent, thus inflaming primal anger against the country the U.S. wants to attack."

"Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. #67"

"To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act."

"I know it's true because I made it up myself."

"Truth is always late, last to arrive, limping along with time."

"Nothing is great but truth, and the smallest truth is great. The other day I had a thought, which I put like this: Even a harmful truth is useful, for it can be harmful only for the moment and will lead to other truths, which must always become useful, very much so. Conversely, even a useful error is harmful, for it can be useful only for the moment, enticing us into other errors, which become more and more harmful."

"Truth isn't truth."

"Without form or comeliness, and nailed to the cross—thus is truth to be adored."

"I stand this morning with a difficult message. I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."

"I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view."

"The Lecturers appointed shall be subjected to no test of any kind, and may be of any denomination, or of any religion or way of thinking, or as is sometimes said, they may be of no religion, or they may be so-called sceptics or agnostics or free-thinkers, provided only that they be reverent men, true thinkers, sincere lovers of and earnest enquirers after truth."

"Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who find it; doubt all, but do not doubt yourself."

"[T]ruth is the ground and condition of freedom. Unless it is true that human beings deserve to have fundamental liberties respected and protected, the tyrant does no wrong in violating them. Relativism, skepticism, and subjectivism about truth provide no secure basis for freedom. We should honor civil liberties because the norms enjoining us to respect and protect them are valid, sound, in a word, true."

"What is true is already so. Owning up to it doesn't make it worse. Not being open about it doesn't make it go away. And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with. Anything untrue isn't there to be lived. People can stand what is true, for they are already enduring it."

"Alius quidam veterum poetarum, cuius nomen mihi nunc memoriae non est, Veritatem Temporis filiam esse dixit."

"Conquer the angry man by love. Conquer the ill-natured man by goodness. Conquer the miser with generosity. Conquer the liar with truth."

"Make an island of yourself, make yourself your refuge; there is no other refuge. Make truth your island, make truth your refuge; there is no other refuge."

"Truth is the sweetest of flavours."

"...[A]ll the measurements in the world do not balance one theorem by which the science of eternal truths is actually advanced."

"The way I have taken seems not to lead to the goal, but much rather to make the truth of geometry doubtful."

"Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth."

"A man of truth must also be a man of care."

"Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him."

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained."

"I thought about it. “Sometimes I think that truth is a place. In my mind, it is like a city; there can be a hundred roads, a thousands paths, that will all take you, eventually, to the same place. It does not matter where you come from. If you walk toward the truth, you will reach it, whatever path you take.” Calum MacInnes looked down at me and said nothing. Then, “You are wrong. The truth is a cave in the black mountains. There is one way there, and one only, and that way is treacherous and hard, and if you choose the wrong path you will die alone, on the mountainside.”"

"It is a fool's prerogative to utter truths that no one else will speak."

"All of humanity is in peril of extinction if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth, and all the truth, and to do so promptly — right now... The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth... It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination. On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate. You can deceive others, you can deceive your brain-self, but you can't deceive your mind-self — for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible."

"The highest of generalizations is the synergetic integration of truth and love."

"Truth is cosmically total: synergetic."

"I am a lover of truth, a worshipper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance. That is my religion, and every day I am sorely, grossly, heinously and deeply offended, wounded, mortified and injured by a thousand different blasphemies against it. When the fundamental canons of truth, honesty, compassion and decency are hourly assaulted by fatuous bishops, pompous, illiberal and ignorant priests, politicians and prelates, sanctimonious censors, self-appointed moralists and busy-bodies, what recourse of ancient laws have I? None whatever. Nor would I ask for any. For unlike these blistering imbeciles my belief in my religion is strong and I know that lies will always fail and indecency and intolerance will always perish."

"Reason is man’s faculty for grasping the world by thought, in contradiction to intelligence, which is man’s ability to manipulate the world with the help of thought. Reason is man's instrument for arriving at the truth, intelligence is man's instrument for manipulating the world more successfully; the former is essentially human, the latter belongs to the animal part of man."

"Being true is different from being taken as true, whether by one or by many or everybody, and in no case is it to be reduced to it. There is no contradiction in something's being true which everybody takes to be false. I understand by 'laws of logic' not psychological laws of takings-to-be-true, but laws of truth. ...If being true is thus independent of being acknowledged by somebody or other, then the laws of truth are not psychological laws: they are boundary stones set in an eternal foundation, which our thought can overflow, but never displace. It is because of this that they have authority for our thought if it would attain truth. They do not bear the relation to thought that the laws of grammar bear to language; they do not make explicit the nature of our human thinking and change as it changes."

"I've lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth — That God governs in the Affairs of Men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his Notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his Aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that except the Lord build the House they labor in vain who build it. I firmly believe this, — and I also believe that without his concurring Aid, we shall succeed in this political Building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our Projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a Reproach and Bye word down to future Ages."

"Mankind naturally and generally love to be flatter'd: Whatever sooths our Pride, and tends to exalt our Species above the rest of the Creation, we are pleas'd with and easily believe, when ungrateful Truths shall be with the utmost Indignation rejected. "What! bring ourselves down to an Equality with the Beasts of the Field! with the meanest part of the Creation! 'Tis insufferable!" But, (to use a Piece of common Sense) our Geese are but Geese tho' we may think 'em Swans; and Truth will be Truth tho' it sometimes prove mortifying and distasteful."

"[A]greement with observed facts" never singles out one individual theory. There is never only one theory that is in complete agreement with all observed facts, but several theories that are in partial agreement. We have to select the final theory by a compromise. The final theory has to be in fair agreement with observed facts and must also be fairly simple. If we consider this point, it is obvious that such a "final" theory cannot be "The Truth."

"People want the truth. Even if they can't handle it, they want it. They may want to look at it as a story or music so they can distance themselves from it, but they want it. That's why people watch the news every night. There's nothing good on the news. They'll throw in a little "good news" near the end, like something about a cat being saved from a tree. But before you hear about that cat, you're going to learn that someone got shot and killed, an earthquake killed a couple of hundred people, and that whatever war is going on at the time is still going on and going hard. And you still watch. Why? Because you want the truth."

"It is not a lie to keep the truth to oneself."

"A very great deal more truth can become known than can be proven."

"The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism."

"Truth has no path. Truth is living and, therefore, changing. Awareness is without choice, without demand, without anxiety; in that state of mind, there is perception. To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person. Awareness has no frontier; it is giving of your whole being, without exclusion."

"If I don’t speak truth I can’t seek truth."

"Just gimme some truth — all I want is the truth."

"Truth is the new hate speech."

"I believe it is an established maxim in morals that he who makes an assertion without knowing whether it is true or false, is guilty of falsehood; and the accidental truth of the assertion, does not justify or excuse him."

"Truth is generally the best vindication against slander."

"I know there is a God, and that He hates injustice and slavery. I see the storm coming, and I know that His hand is in it. If He has a place and work for me — and I think He has — I believe I am ready. I am nothing, but truth is everything. I know I am right because I know that liberty is right, for Christ teaches it, and Christ is God. I have told them that a house divided against itself cannot stand, and Christ and reason say the same; and they will find it so."

"Be a master everywhere and wherever you stand is your true place."