Quotes about truth

We all see different versions of the same thing. I have written the truest book I was capable of creating. It's the way I've always made sense of the world and my life.

The role that one assigns to truthfulness will always remain central in considering what kind of person one wants to be—how one wishes to treat, not only other people, but oneself.

People seldom look very hard for things they don’t want to find.

I admit almost every charge of the indictment. The only thing wrong with it is that it’s too partial, too trivial. You’ve spent your life hunting for counterfeit money in a pile of treasure. You looked for evil all your life, to prove your case—naturally you found it, and where it was absent you created it. Any fool can do that. I’ve looked for good in human nature and elsewhere, and found it, heaped up and flowing over. Anyone can do that too, though good may be a little harder to see, because it’s all around you, no further away than the nearest leaf, the nearest smile or pleasant word, no further away than every breath of air. You say there’s no truth in men. Do you know what truth is, any more than Pilate did? Human beings are in the early stages of trying to accept and understand empirical truth.

If we are truly a great nation, the truth cannot destroy us.

“It has been the fate of many a man,” said Naakkve, “that those who were his fiercest opponents in life found success on the road he had pointed out to them—but only after they had made him into fodder for the worms. After his mouth was stuffed with earth, the lesser men no longer shrank from affirming the truth of his words.”

“What’s it like?” Andine asked curiously. “Hearing the thoughts of others, I mean?”

“Disturbing,” Leitha replied. “What people say and what they’re thinking don’t always exactly match. We’re much closer to being animals than most of us would care to admit.”

He decided to try the truth again. It was a novel approach and worth experimenting with. (p. 105)

"Our job is to find out the truth, even if it is buried deep in the earth."

Did I ever lie to get my story? Ten-mile-high whoppers every day before breakfast, if it got me one inch closer to the truth

As many truths as men. Occasionally, I glimpse a truer Truth, hiding in imperfect simulacrums of itself, but as I approach, it bestirs itself & moves deeper into the thorny swamp of dissent.

I became a scientist because... it's like panning for gold in a muddy torrent. Truth is the gold.