Quotes about truth

Anything is true if enough people believe it is.

Your version of the truth is the only one that matters.

Truth is singular. Its 'versions' are mistruths.

Then the true true is diff'rent to the seemin' true? said I.

Yay, an' it usually is, I mem'ry Meronym sayin', an' that's why true true is presher'n'rarer'n diamonds.

Valleysmen'd not want to hear, she answered, that human hunger birthed the Civ'lize, but human hunger killed it too. I know it from other tribes offland what I stayed with. Times are you say a person's b'liefs ain't true, they think you're sayin' their lifes ain't true an' their truth ain't true.

“I honestly thought you’d be happier if you knew nothing about it for the rest of your life. Was I wrong?”

Irene slumped in her chair. “No, you weren’t. Everyone’s going to say that, aren’t they? ’It was for your own good.’”

“Something you’ll learn as you get older is that truth and reconciliation may be necessary for nations, but it isn’t necessarily best for individuals.”

Sometimes the obvious answer is the true answer.

“There is no truth to peace,” she said. “Peace is at best a brief interlude between hostilities. The treaties which might be signed here are no more than lies. The field of battle is more honest.”

Honor and honesty, compassion and truth are good even if they kill you, for they alone give life its dignity and worth. (Ch. 24)

This was probably rooted in a belief that had been inculcated to him from the get-go: that there was an objective reality, which all people worth talking to could observe and understand, and that there was no point in arguing about anything that could be so observed and so understood.

When a thunderstorm was headed your way across the prairie, you took the washing down from the line and closed the windows.

It wasn’t necessary to have a meeting about it.

The sales force didn’t need to get involved.

Deliberate error was unthinkable. Even the concealment of truth filled him with a sense of imperfection, of wrongness — of what, in a human being, would have been called guilt. For like his makers, Hal had been created innocent; but, all too soon, a snake had entered his electronic Eden.

For the last hundred million miles, he had been brooding over the secret he could not share with Poole and Bowman…who would not learn the mission's full purpose, until there was need to know. So ran the logic of the planners; but their twin gods of Security and National Interest meant nothing to Hal. He was only aware of the conflict that was slowly destroying his integrity.

But please remember this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.