Quotes about truth

With the destruction of history, contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.

Yakov Shepsovitch, what more can I tell you? Take heart in the truth and endure your trials. Sustain yourself in your innocence. (Bibikov)

As for the Bible, it was a book, and all books told the truth in the sense that their authors believed they were writing a kind of truth.

At the moment false claims spread on social media far faster than the truth, because of the algorithms that spread outraging material faster and further.

Being spoon-fed rosy-hued misinformation by the authorities was no more than people had come to expect—and preemptively discount. They only got suspicious when presented with what looked like the plain unvarnished truth.

The truth is the truth. You tell it even when it hurts or it loses value even when it doesn’t.

Filhyn smiled. “Is it not always better to tell the truth though, Representative?”

Errun looked at her, shook his head. “The truth? No matter what? For good or ill? Are you mad? I do hope you’re having a joke with me here, young lady….Don’t pretend you are so naive, Filhyn. The truth is not always useful, not always good. It’s like putting your faith in water. Yes, we need the rain, but too much can sweep you away in a flood and drown you. Like all great natural, elemental forces, the truth needs to be channelled, managed, controlled and intelligently, morally allocated.” He glared at her. “You are having a joke with me, aren’t you?”

I might as well be, she thought. She wondered if she would finally be a real politician when she agreed with what Errun was saying.

“Well, it all sounds most unpleasant,” Droffo said. He shook his head. “You hear all sorts of ridiculous stories; the workers are full of them. Too much drink, too little learning.”

“No, more than that, sir,” Neguste told him. “These are facts.”

“I think I might dispute that,” Droffo said.

“All the same, sir, facts is facts. That itself’s a fact.”

Truth, I have learned, differs for everybody. Just as no two people ever see a rainbow in exactly the same place—and yet both most certainly see it, while the person seemingly standing right underneath it does not see it at all—so truth is a question of where one stands, and the direction one is looking in at the time.

“Quettil, it doesn’t matter,” the King said airily, waving one hand. “I prefer accuracy to flattery.”

Truth does not need to borrow garments from error. (Also translated as: Truth does not need to borrow garments from falsehood.)

The truth of a story is what the novelist strives for, and quite often the writer is taken down strange and unexpected paths on this search.