Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about truth and lies

458 quotes from 240 people

Most readBy personPage 16 of 31

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–1986Truth is a Pathless Land (1929)
- Religion
Truth is not to be bought any more than love can be bought.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–1986Second Talk in Poona (10 September 1958), J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. 580910, Vol. XI, p. 20
- Love
Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti1895–1986First Talk in Rajahmundry (20 November 1949), The Collected Works, Vol. VI, p. 5
- Knowledge
Human beings are unable to be honest with themselves about themselves. They cannot talk about themselves without embellishing.
Akira Kurosawa1910–1998Criterion Collection essay on Rashamon, excerpted from Something Like an Autobiography as translated by Audie E. Bock (1982)
Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.
Akira Kurosawa1910–1998Something Like an Autobiography (1981)
- Acting
Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.
LLaozi580–501 BCTao Te Ching (4th century BC), Part II, Chapter 81In context
If I don’t speak truth I can’t seek truth.
Ursula K. Le Guin1929–2018The Eye of the Heron (1978), Chapter 5 (p. 77)
Good books tell the truth, even when they’re about things that never have been and never will be. They’re truthful in a different way.
Stanisław Lem1921–2006“Pirx’s Tale” in More Tales of Pirx The Pilot (1983)
- Reading
We spend our lives fighting to get people very slightly more stupid than ourselves to accept truths that the great men have always known.
Doris Lessing1919–2013The Golden Notebook (1962), Paul Tanner, in “Free Women: 1”
- Intelligence
If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.
C. S. Lewis1898–1963
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
Truth is generally the best vindication against slander.
Abraham Lincoln1809–1865Letter to Edwin Stanton (14 July 1864); published in Abraham Lincoln: A History (1890) by John Hay
To love truth for truth’s sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
John Locke1632–1704Letter to Anthony Collins (29 October 1703)
- Virtue
It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book IV, Ch. 7, sec. 11
He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it.
John Locke1632–1704An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689), Book IV, Ch. 19: Of Enthusiasm (Chapter added in the fourth edition).