Philosophy & Thought: Truth Quotes

Truth sits at the heart of philosophy, testing claims against reason, evidence, and lived experience. This selection gathers memorable lines from classical and modern voices, tracing how honesty, doubt, and clarity shape understanding and dialogue. Use these quotations to spark reflection, challenge assumptions, and guide ethical inquiry, whether you are studying, writing, or simply seeking a clearer view of reality.

Similar topics:Deep Ethics & Morality Free Will & Fate Reason & Logic Wisdom

"The oaths of a woman I inscribe on water"

Sophocles, Author

Sophocles

"Everything you add to the truth subtracts from the truth"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false"

William J. Casey, Director

William J. Casey

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth"

Vladimir Lenin, Leader

Vladimir Lenin

"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth"

Voltaire, Writer

Voltaire

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"Facts and truth really don't have much to do with each other"

William Faulkner, Novelist

William Faulkner

"All great truths begin as blasphemies"

George Bernard Shaw, Dramatist

George Bernard Shaw

"History is a set of lies agreed upon"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Napoleon Bonaparte

"Understanding is a three-edged sword. Your side, my side, and the truth"

J. Michael Straczynski, Producer

J. Michael Straczynski

"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon"

Napoleon Bonaparte, Leader

Napoleon Bonaparte

"The past actually happened but history is only what someone wrote down"

A. Whitney Brown, Comedian

A. Whitney Brown

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

Neil Gaiman, Author

Neil Gaiman

"A man sees what he wants to see, And disregards the rest"

Paul Simon, Musician

Paul Simon

"Don't listen to what the Communists say, but look at what they do"

Nguyen Van Thieu, Statesman

"In our country the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State"

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Author

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

"News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising"

Lord Northcliffe, Publisher

"Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man - the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

"It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong"

Voltaire, Writer

Voltaire

"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold"

Aristotle, Philosopher

Aristotle

"I can prove anything by statistics except the truth"

George Canning, Statesman

George Canning

"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

"We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the secret sits in the middle and knows"

Robert Frost, Poet

Robert Frost

"A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding"

Isaac Newton, Mathematician

Isaac Newton

"All meanings, we know, depend on the key of interpretation"

George Eliot, Author

George Eliot

"After all, the ultimate goal of all research is not objectivity, but truth"

Helene Deutsch, Psychologist

"A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it"

Oscar Wilde, Dramatist

Oscar Wilde

"Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority"

Francis Bacon, Philosopher

Francis Bacon

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted"

William S. Burroughs, Writer

William S. Burroughs

"A harmful truth is better than a useful lie"

Thomas Mann, Writer

Thomas Mann

"The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears"

Heraclitus, Philosopher

Heraclitus

"The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable"

James A. Garfield, President

James A. Garfield

"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth"

Friedrich Nietzsche, Philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche

"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts"

Abraham Lincoln, President

Abraham Lincoln

"You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time"

Abraham Lincoln, President

Abraham Lincoln

"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. Lewis, Author

C. S. Lewis

"There is no power on earth more formidable than the truth"

Margaret Lee Runbeck, Author

Margaret Lee Runbeck

"Sanity is a cozy lie"

Susan Sontag, Author

Susan Sontag

"Ah, what a dusty answer gets the soul when hot for certainties in this our life!"

George Meredith, Novelist

George Meredith

"Speech was given to man to disguise his thoughts"

Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, Diplomat

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