Truth Speaker Quotes & Sayings

That word. I would have given anything to hear her say it over the summer, to have had the chance to say it back, but now, more than ever, I understand its true power. How it can make you ache as much as it can make you soar. How it shouldn't be said in return unless you mean it as deeply as the speaker. And that's not something you can ever know. Not truly. There's too much blind faith involved and that word is always, always a risk. You'll get hurt. Or the other person will. You'll stomp on someone's heart without meaning to. Loving is foolish and risky, like trying to raise a building in a bog. Emotions don't make strong foundations. — Erin Bowman

There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: he must have either truth or entertainment for them. — Dale Carnegie

We listen to what people say, we read what they write - that's our evidence, that's our corroboration. But if the face contradicts the speaker's words, we interrogate the face. A shifty look in the eye, a rising blush, the uncontrollable twitch of a face muscle - and then we
know. We recognise the hypocrisy or the false claim, and the truth stands evident before us. — Julian Barnes

I've always known, on a purely intellectual level, that our separateness and isolation are an illusion. We're all made of the same thing - the blown-out pieces of matter formed in the fires of dead stars. — Blake Crouch

The truth is, while the FBI is hiding behind the 5th Amendment, the Unabomer is qualifying for Social Security as a terrorist. Beam me up, Mr. Speaker. — James Traficant

Ryzhkova was accustomed to tarot with its layers of meaning, interpretations, and reversals, and how a picture might look one way but contain a contrary truth. Used to her silent apprentice, she had forgotten that language itself was as subtle and slippery as her cards, and that words contained hidden seeds that blossomed with a speaker's intent. A wish for safety meant nothing if the force behind it was a desire to kill. Though she spoke of love and protection, dread, grief, and anger bled through. Each word that fell from her tongue bound itself to paper with a small part of her soul, infusing the cards not with love as she thought, but with a hex burned strong and deep by fear. Buried in the heart of the deck, the Fool's eyes shut. She closed the box. A — Erika Swyler

the competence of a speaker has no relevance to the truth — Robert M. Pirsig

Parrhesia is a kind of verbal activity where the speaker has a specific relation to truth through frankness, a certain relationship to his own life through danger, a certain type of relation to himself or other people through criticism (self-criticism or criticism of other people), and a specific relation to moral law through freedom and duty. More precisely, parrhesia is a verbal activity in which a speaker expresses his personal relationship to truth, and risks his life because he recognizes truth-telling as a duty to improve or help other people (as well as himself). In parrhesia, the speaker uses his freedom and chooses frankness instead of persuasion, truth instead of falsehood or silence, the risk of death instead of life and security, criticism instead of flattery, and moral duty instead of self-interest and moral apathy — Michel Foucault

Give yourself permission 2 evolve. Become a philosopher; come up with your own interpretation of life and stop accepting someone else's as your truth. — Germany Kent

He has a story. A story worth more than my own beating heart. He has a name. A name that - if it were only uttered aloud, breathed out in the meekest, softest whisper - would shake the Cold to its arctic foundations. Cut it in half like an ignited sword. Tear it asunder, and cast it broken and crippled from this place. His is the name of fire. The name that rides the whisper of the candlelight.
-The Penitent God — S.G. Night

In good speaking, should not the mind of the speaker know the truth of the matter about which he is to speak? — Carl Sagan

Wes Clark is a man of whom you can ask a question, and he will look you directly in the eye, and give you the most truthful and complete answer you can imagine. You will know the absolute truth of the statement as well as the thought process behind the answer. You will have no doubt as to the intellect of the speaker and meaning of the answer to this question ... So you can see, as a politician, he has a lot to learn. — Mario Cuomo

Always make it a practice to stir your own mind thoroughly to think through what you have easily believed. Your position is not really yours until you make it yours through suffering and study. The author or speaker from whom you learn the most is not the one who teaches you something you didn't know before, but the one who helps you take a truth with which you have quietly struggled, give it expression, and speak it clearly and boldly. — Oswald Chambers

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that - is there a more horrid kind of object in creation? — Thomas Carlyle

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day. We love eloquence for its own sake, and not for any truth which it may utter, or any heroism it may inspire. Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. — Henry David Thoreau

The truth hurts, only when it can heal. — Rob Liano

It's very hard to teach someone how to write a song if to begin with there's no creative crop to harvest. — Barry Mann

Once you realize that everyone is in the same boat, that everyone is just as insecure and childlike as everyone else, that all these jokers in D.C. ruining our world are just greedy kids grabbing for marbles - I think that realization means you're an adult. — Conor Oberst

Why tell me that a man is a fine speaker, if it is not the truth that he is speaking? — Thomas Carlyle

I have too many secrets. For all these years I've been a speaker for the dead, uncovering secrets and helping people to live in the light of truth. Now I no longer tell anyone half of what I know, because if I told the whole truth there would be fear, hatred, brutality, murder, war. — Orson Scott Card

Is it hard to make a living in show business? Yeah. — Marc Maron

Authoritative interpretations of the First Amendment guarantees have consistently refused to recognize an exception for any test of truth whether administered by judges, juries, or administrative officials and especially one that puts the burden of proving truth on the speaker. — William J. Brennan

I was a young impressionable 13 year old hearing the pro-left and pro-right argument. So one day I would be convinced that one side was right. the other day I would be convinced the other side was right.
And then I was getting confused. How can both of these things be true if they were contrary to each other.

So I decided to focus on a field where the truth didn't dependent upon the eloquence of the speaker. The truth was absolute. — Savas Dimopoulos

When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic. — Donald James

Best masters for the young writer and speaker are the fault- finding brothers and sisters at home who will not spare him, but willpick and cavil, and tell the odious truth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truth is dangerous. It topples palaces and kills kings. It stirs gentle men to rage and bids them take up arms. It wakes old grievances and opens forgotten wounds. It is the mother of the sleepless night and the hag-ridden day. And yet there is one thing that is more dangerous than Truth. Those who would silence Truth's voice are more destructive by far.
It is most perilous to be a speaker of Truth. Sometimes one must choose to be silent, or be silenced. But if a truth cannot be spoken, it must at least be known. Even if you dare not speak truth to others, never lie to yourself. — Frances Hardinge

History is not a fixed truth. It changes with the speaker. — Jenn Reese

To escape responsibility for violence we imagine it is enough to pledge never to be the first to do violence. But no one ever sees himself as casting the first stone. Even the most violent persons believe that they are always reacting to a violence committed in the first instance by someone else. — Rene Girard

A desire for privacy does not imply shameful secrets; Moglen argues, again and again, that without anonymity in discourse, free speech is impossible, and hence also democracy. The right to speak the truth to power does not shield the speaker from the consequences of doing so; only comparable power or anonymity can do that. — Nick Harkaway

Unlike her judges, she suggested that words do not have set meanings, that there is a gap between speaker and listener, and that human understanding always "falls short of absolute truth. — Eve LaPlante

There is a distorted perception of what goes on in Brussels. No one reports on the Commission taking a hundred initiatives from its predecessor off the table in order to shift competencies back to member state governments. — Jean-Claude Juncker

Infinite speech is that mode of discourse that consistently reminds us of the unspeakability of nature. It bears no claim to truth, originating from nothing but the genius of the speaker. Infinite speech is therefore no about anything; it is always to someone. It is not command, but address. It belongs entirely to the speakable. — James P. Carse

Whenever a people or an institution forget its hard beginnings, it is beginning to decay. — Carl Sandburg

In a lecture I attended once, the speaker concluded by saying that now we were all 90 minutes closer to death. People in the audience chuckled, but the speaker remarked, quite angrily, that what he said was actually rather sad. The passing of time is a deep and sad truth that no man or woman can change. — Haim Shapira

I love Dead Ringers. A democratic set, the work was taken seriously. — Christopher Eccleston

When the word is heard consult the source, and beware the messenger. — T.F. Hodge

You make me want to be less of an asshole. — Penny Reid

The truth of faith is a slender, glowing element that runs through even the seemingly ordinary and undramatic moments of existence. Even at low intensity, it is a steady source of illumination. Such religious truth is powerful even when it seems faint, even when it seems obscured by the larger events of history. — Eugene Kennedy