Quotes about truth

There aint but one truth, said John Grady. The truth is what happened. It aint what come out of somebody's mouth.

Before he had realized it, these exercises had given him the talent to be skeptical about his own self, and he had come to the recognition that most of what is generally considered the truth is entirely relative. Subject and object are not as distinct as most people think. If the boundary separating the two isn’t clear-cut to begin with, it is not such a difficult task to intentionally shift back and forth from one to the other.

“Not very heartwarming facts, are they.”

“Well, with facts what’s important is their weight and accuracy. Warmth is secondary.”

I’ve never had the slightest interest in matters of the occult. People have been repeating the same kinds of fraud throughout the world since the beginning of time, using the same old tricks, and still these despicable fakes continue to thrive. That is because most people believe not so much in truth as in things they wish were the truth. Their eyes may be wide open, but they don’t see a thing. Tricking them is as easy as twisting a baby’s arm.

The more power something has, the less the actual facts matter.

“Nice,” said Abigail. “Very plausible.”

“Yeah, but just because it’s plausible doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Nightingale had taught me to be cautious of the early sources. “A great deal of it is accurate,” he said. “And a great deal is less so. Unfortunately it can be difficult to determine which is which.”

I considered lying for all of about two nano-seconds, but I don’t have a death wish—not even a figurative one. Of course, philosophically speaking, truth is a slippery concept and one should always be alive to nuance.

Taking a statement from anyone can be a long process on account of the fact that your average member of the public wouldn’t know the truth if it donned a pink tutu and danced in front of them singing the Chicken Song.

It’s always better to tell a half-truth than a half-lie.

There we continued the time-honored tradition of brazenly lying through our teeth while telling nothing but the truth.

The truth can be useful, sometimes. Assuming you can convince people.