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Quotes about truth and lies

458 quotes from 240 people

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A few months ago I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart and my best intentions still tell me that’s true, but the facts and the evidence tell me it is not.
Ronald Reagan1911–2004Television address (4 March 1987) on Iran-Contra affair
- Facts
For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963“Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”, in Rehabilitations and Other Essays (1939)
- Thinking
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.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge1772–1834Aids to Reflection (1825), Aphorism 1, p. 1
The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.
Ludwig Wittgenstein1889–1951Culture and Value (1980), p. 41e
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.
Mahatma Gandhi1869–1948Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285
The silent colossal National Lie that is the support and confederate of all the tyrannies and shams and inequalities and unfairnesses that afflict the peoples — that is the one to throw bricks and sermons at.
Mark Twain1835–1910“My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It”, in The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Essays (1900)
Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm; it is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus⁠—it moves stones, it charms brutes. Enthusiasm is the genius of sincerity, and truth accomplishes no victories without it.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton1803–1873The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), Book I, Chapter VIII
- Inspiration
Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.
George Orwell1903–1950“Benefit Of Clergy: Some Notes On Salvador Dalí,” Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture (1944)
- Writing
The symmetry of form attainable in pure fiction can not so readily be achieved in a narration essentially having less to do with fable than with fact. Truth uncompromisingly told will always have its ragged edges…
Herman Melville1819–1891Billy Budd, Sailor (1891), Ch. 28
- Writing
Politeness does not interfere with facts, politeness is just another fact.
Gertrude Stein1874–1946Paris France (1940)
- Facts
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.
William James1842–1910“The Will to Believe” p. 10
- Facts
I did not deceive you, mon ami. At most, I permitted you to deceive yourself.
Agatha Christie1890–1976The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), Hercule Poirot
For such Truth as opposeth no man’s profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.
Thomas Hobbes1588–1679Leviathan (1651), Review and Conclusion, p. 396 (Last text line)In context
There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them.
Jean Cocteau1889–1963Le Coq et l’Arlequin (1918)
The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom — these are the pillars of society.
Henrik Ibsen1828–1906The Pillars of Society (1877), Act IV
- Freedom