Quotes about truth and lies
458 quotes from 240 people
Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.
Jean Baudrillard1929–2007Simulacra and Simulation (1981), “The Precession of Simulacra,” p. 12To 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)Memories of the past are not memories of facts but memories of your imaginings of the facts.
Philip Roth1933–2018The Facts: A Novelist’s Autobiography (1988), opening letter to Nathan ZuckermanThe truth is the truth. You tell it even when it hurts or it loses value even when it doesn’t.
Iain Banks1954–2013The Hydrogen Sonata (2013), Chapter 23 (p. 505)I’m more interested in what people tell themselves happened rather than what actually happened.
Kazuo Ishiguroborn 1954Dunn, Adam. “In the land of memory: Kazuo Ishiguro remembers when” cnn.com Book News. 27 Oct. 2000 (archived from the original on 2001-06-25).
Michel de Montaigne1533–1592Essays, Book III, Ch. 2, Of Repentance
Hermann Hesse1877–1962Siddhartha (1922)If you ever injected truth into politics you’d have no politics.
Will Rogers1879–1935Syndicated column, “A Few Shots of Scopolamin” (15 July 1923)
Søren Kierkegaard1813–1855Journals IV A 87 (1843)
Herbert Spencer1820–1903The Development Hypothesis (1852)
Stefan Zweig1881–1942Beware of Pity (1939)
Swami Vivekananda1863–1902Pearls of Wisdom
Fernando Pessoa1888–1935Álvaro de Campos (heteronym), in Presença no. 5 (1927)
Jean Cocteau1889–1963“Le Paquet Rouge” in Opéra (1925)
George Eliot1819–1880Adam Bede (1859)