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Quotes about truth and lies

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Not believing others implies that you yourself are deceitful. The liar suffers twice: he neither believes nor is believed.
Baltasar Gracián1601–1658The Art of Worldly Wisdom (1647), Maxim 154 (p. 87)
To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.
Antonio Gramsci1891–1937“Workers’ Democracy”, L’Ordine Nuovo (21 June 1919)
- Politics
Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.
Ulysses S. Grant1822–1885Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67
- War & Peace
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
Robert Graves1895–1985“The Persian Version,” lines 1–2, from Poems 1938-1945: Satires and Grotesques (1946)
- History
I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.
Alexander Hamilton1757–1804Letter to Robert Morris (13 August 1782)
To think in terms of either pessimism or optimism oversimplifies the truth. The problem is to see reality as it is.
Thích Nhất Hạnh1926–2022The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation (1999), Page 52
- Hope
You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it.
George Harrison1943–2001The Beatles Anthology (2000), p. 267
The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.
Václav Havel1936–2011Disturbing the Peace (1986), Ch. 2: Writing for the Stage, p. 67
What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.
Václav Havel1936–2011International Herald Tribune (29 October 1991)
- Politics
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne1804–1864The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XX: The Minister in a MazeIn context
Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!
Nathaniel Hawthorne1804–1864The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XXIVIn context
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
Nathaniel Hawthorne1804–1864The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XVIIIn context
One truth discovered is immortal, and entitles its author to be so; for, like a new substance in nature, it cannot be destroyed.
William Hazlitt1778–1830The Spirit of the Age (1825), “Jeremy Bentham”
Not curiosity, not vanity, not the consideration of expediency, not duty and conscientiousness, but an unquenchable, unhappy thirst that brooks no compromise leads us to truth.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel1770–1831Nürnberg, Sep. 30, 1809; Schrieb’s zum Andenken (written to remember)
There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.
Ernest Hemingway1899–1961For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), Ch 43