Shocking Truth Quotes & Sayings

God, I love you, I whisper, and come crashing back into my body with a suddenness that makes me gasp. I don't know what's more shocking
that I've called on the god I don't believe in, or that the lie I told felt so much like the truth. — Stacey Jay

When I was young, I had a list of things that I wanted in a husband. I knew what he should read and what sports he should like and blah, blah, blah. But the truth is, that the list was a shocking mirror image of me. You want to marry yourself when you are young. All the things you think are so urgently important, when you get older, you discover they don't have anything to do with love. — Nora Ephron

At the end of the day, what I show is real life. I tell the truth. And the truth can be shocking. — Larry Clark

We don't like to think of ourselves as prey - it is a lessening thought - but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals - sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few - perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior. It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal. — Gary Paulsen

Since unfortunately we cannot, I believe, spare [our children] the shocking truth about the century of the 'mystery of evil,' knowledge that is even beyond the endurance of adults, let us proceed cautiously so that the knowledge will not damage them but will, like a vaccination, immunize them against evil. Is that possible? I don't know. In Holocaust education the outcomes are unknown, after all; only the aim is clear. We teach so that genocide on a mass scale, the specialty of the past century, can be circumvented in the future. — Bogdan Michalski

Every new truth begins in a shocking heresy. — Margaret Deland

The shocking truth of the gospel, is that it is not God who distances himself from the Church because He is offended at her sin, but the Church who has consistently drawn back from the power of the full Gospel, because she is offended at God's generosity! — Phelim Doherty

He [Jesus] speaks in parables, and though we have approached these parables reverentially all these many years and have heard them expounded as grave and reverent vehicles of holy truth, I suspect that many if not all of them were originally not grave at all but were antic, comic, often more than just a little shocking. — Frederick Buechner

Do you have any idea what the typical response is whenever I do give someone a glimpse of my life?"
Gideon paused, as if he waited for her to answer.
And Monroe hesitated. Yes. She did know. She knew because it was the same response she would get it she chose to let down her own guard. Hell, it was practically the same response Miles had given the night she had told him the unadulterated truth of her past. She shook her head again.
"Standard response," he said. "I swear to God. First thing out of their mouth's is: 'Wow. It's shocking you're so normal.' What the fuck? Do I have to be damaged for my past to make sense? And what the hell is normal anyway? And does white bread America have dibs on it?"
Gideon stopped talking, crossed his arms, and the look on his face said he regretted saying as much as he had. — Taylor Stevens

The shocking truth about prosperity is that it is shockingly right instead of shockingly wrong for you to be prosperous. Please note that the word 'rich' means having an abundance of good or living a fuller, more satisfying life. Indeed, you are prosperous to the degree that you are experiencing peace, health, happiness and plenty in your world. There are honorable methods that can carry you quickly toward that goal. It is easier to accomplish than you may now think. That, too, is the shocking truth about prosperity. — Catherine Ponder

You have had indeed a fair trial. It is a shocking thing when a judge of your high office is shown to have betrayed the truth and his honor, and I sentence you to the penitentiary. — Florence Ellinwood Allen

I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it. — Henry Miller

We believe that the best Web content optimization strategy is something as old as journalism itself: the shocking truth and the authentic opinion. — Nick Denton

The truth is how you say it, and to be 'one's self' is the most shocking custom of all. — Djuna Barnes

It seems to me, and I am personally convinced, that the Church must never speak from a position of strength. [These are shocking words.] It ought not to be one of the forces influencing this or that state. The Church ought to be, if you will, just as powerless as God himself, which does not coerce but which calls and unveils the beauty and the truth of things without imposing them. As soon as the Church begins to exercise power, it loses its most profound characteristic which is divine love [i.e.] the understanding of those it is called to save and not to smash ... — Anthony Of Sourozh

There's a funny thing about fame. The truth is you run as fast as you can towards it because it's everything you want. Not just the fame but what it represents, meaning work, meaning opportunity. And then you get there, and it's shocking how immediately you become enveloped in this world that is incredibly restricting. — George Clooney

In the face of the idea that truth might afford the opposite of satisfaction and turn out to be completely shocking to humanity at any given historical moment, ... the fathers of pragmatism made the satisfaction of the subject the criterion of truth. For such a doctrine there is no possibility of rejecting or even criticizing any species of belief that is enjoyed by its adherents. — Max Horkheimer

Only choices made in love are compassionate. There are no exceptions. Do you have the courage to act with an empowered heart without attachment to the outcome? If not, you have no ability to give or experience compassion. That is the shocking truth. — Gary Zukav

If you are anxious about a business deal or worried about your job, you are seeing failure as a possibility. And having seen and felt the end, you have willed the means of realization of the end. It is a shocking truth we should never forget. — Eric Butterworth

That's the other thing I learned that day, that the truth, however shocking or uncomfortable, in the end leads to liberation and dignity. — Ricky Gervais

I'm of the opinion that many Christians are in deep denial about the reality of there being 'real' Evil in this world. Evil that cannot be reasoned with; is reprobate, incorrigible, determined, un-appeasable, violent, murderous, and unrelenting. I find this denial shocking in that the Bible clearly shows that in the end this battle is all about Good vs. Evil. This is a very real and present danger to the leaders and people of Israel. They know the truth and are not in any denial about it!!! It's harsh, yes! However, it is Real and a danger to those in Israel. This is not my first rodeo!!! Combat brings me no joy!!! But, God has His holy warriors who risk their lives so others can have the luxury to live in denial!!! Israeli's have no such luxury!!! — R. Alan Woods

...the greatest barrier to intimacy is fear -- fear of being known, fear of being rejected, fear of facing the truth about ourselves...

...We are afraid to be known because at some deep level we fear that the truth about us, when out in the open and reflected back to us through someone else's eyes, will be shocking to ourselves. — Sheila Walsh

The shocking truth is that until recently most people didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with genocide, as long as it didn't happen to them. — Steven Pinker

Realizations are strange things. They are composed outside of the conscious self, they are the ends of paths we cannot tread in our waking minds, and for this reason, the most shocking realizations may stab across one's mind, and yet be gone in an instant, fleeting, known-and-unknown. — Moira Katson

When I write I don't aim to shock people, and I'm surprised when I do. But I don't think that anything that occurs in life should be omitted from art, though the artist should present it in a fashion that is artistic and not ugly. I set out to tell the truth. And sometimes the truth is shocking. — Tennessee Williams

Jesus' words are slightly less shocking when you consider that exclusive claims to truth are more common than we know. Truth is, by its nature, exclusive. Two differing claims cannot both be right. Math teachers make exclusive claims all the time. They will tell you that the multiplication table is not up for negotiation. There are right answers and wrong ones. A doctor's prescription is an exclusive claim as well. It excludes every medication except the one that is written on the prescription paper. A person who gives you their phone number is telling you to exclude dialing all other numbers except the digits they have provided you. — Jon Morrison

We learned the shocking truth that "home" isn't necessarily a certain spot on earth. It must be a place where you can "feel" at home, which means "free" to us. — Maria Augusta Von Trapp

One must take into account the shocking fact that we live on a world that spins. After considering this truth, nothing should come as a surprise. — Thomas Ligotti

She was not unacquainted with these sudden shocking illuminations, but they were among those experiences which are ever-new - like love, orgasms, or barking your shin. You never really got used to them.

This one wasn't the light that cleaves the darkness, the one bright shining truth that slashes through the murk and banishes all doubt, the divine radiance that heals all wounds before plodding Father Time gets his boots on. She had no faith in those counterfeit notions, though it wasn't the thing itself that was false. It was the yearning for it - the yearning that must cleave to something (anything) because it was bright, not because it was true; that confused letting go with running away; that believed healing was the mere dead absence of pain. — Owen R. O'Neill

Im extremely honest, and I pride myself on it. I dont try to be shocking. Im playful, and I know when something Im saying is maybe shocking, but its just the truth, I never wanted to be scary to people or upsetting to people. I simply want to live the way I need to live. — Angelina Jolie

Some say "The end is near," as if that is shocking news. The truth is, the end is always near. What is actually shocking is that we, ourselves, can help to choose which end. — T.A. Barron

I know that sometimes things should be left in the past, that knowing isn't always better. Sometimes the truth is so horrible that it must be uncovered in bits and pieces, snippets here and there, absorbed slowly, as the whole of it at once is simply too shocking to bear.
And sometimes the truth changes everything... — Gary L. Stewart

Some lurid things have been said about me - that I am a racist, a hopeless alcoholic, a closet homosexual and so forth - that I leave to others to decide the truth of. I'd only point out, though, that if true these accusations must also have been true when I was still on the correct side, and that such shocking deformities didn't seem to count for so much then. Arguing with the Stalinist mentality for more than three decades now, and doing a bit of soapboxing and street-corner speaking on and off, has meant that it takes quite a lot to hurt my tender feelings, or bruise my milk-white skin. — Christopher Hitchens

Ms. Fuller explained to me that the reason Sickert gave Ms. Pash for his divulging such a fantastic and shocking story was he wanted the truth "known but not during his lifetime." To prove his point, Sickert supposedly showed Ms. Pash a number of "murder paintings that he later burned," Ms. Fuller told me. — Patricia Cornwell

When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less. This truth is both shocking and unsurprising: shocking because no one would ever admit to stereotyping on the basis of gender and unsurprising because clearly we do. — Sheryl Sandberg