Truth Untruth Quotes & Sayings

It is not history. But I am beginning to wonder strongly what is the nature of history. Is it only memory in decent sentences, and if so, how reliable is it? I would suggest, not very. And that therefore most truth and fact offered by these syntactical means is treacherous and unreliable. And yet I recognise that we live our lives, and even keep our sanity, by the lights of this treachery and this unreliability, just as we build our love of country on these paper worlds of misapprehension and untruth. Perhaps this is our nature, and perhaps unaccountably it is part of our glory as a creature, that we can build our best and most permanent buildings on foundations of utter dust. — Sebastian Barry

within an established totalitarian regime the purpose of propaganda is not to persuade, much less to inform, but rather to humiliate. From this point of view, propaganda should not approximate to the truth as closely as possible: on the contrary, it should do as much violence to it as possible. For by endlessly asserting what is patently untrue, by making such untruth ubiquitous and unavoidable, and finally by insisting that everyone publicly acquiesce in it, the regime displays its power and reduces individuals to nullities. — Anthony Daniels

God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is truth, not untruth. God alone is great. — Mahatma Gandhi

Let each man say what he deems truth, and let truth itself be commended unto God. — Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

And that's why I've chosen to write these pages as I've written them. For only by stepping into the middle zone, the polychrome edge between truth and untruth, is it tolerable to be here and writing this at all. — Donna Tartt

Truth had a way of coming out on top - and it was just as well for everybody that it did. If there ever came a day when truth was so soundly defeated that it never emerged, but sank, instead, under the sheer volume of untruth that the world produced, then that would be a sad day for Botswana, and for the people who lived in Botswana. It would be a sad day for the whole world, that day. — Alexander McCall Smith

In the second half of life the necessity is imposed of recognizing no longer the validity of our former ideals but of their contraries. Of perceiving the error in what was previously our conviction, of sensing the untruth in what was our truth, and of weighing the degree of opposition, and even of hostility, in what we took to be love. — Carl Jung

Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith. — Albert Schweitzer

Truth does not become untruth simply because its existence upsets the scion of a High House. — Jim Butcher

If you take part of the truth, and try to make that part of the truth, all of the truth, then that part of the truth becomes an untruth. — Adrian Rogers

Truth becomes untruth if uttered by your enemy — George Orwell

There is a lot of social photography being done now to point to the untruth of photography. It's getting very dull now. So, okay photography doesn't tell the truth. So what? Everyone has known this forever. — Abelardo Morell

Don't lies in the end put us on the path to truth? And don't my stories, true or false, point to the same conclusion? Don't they have the same meaning? So, what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in either case, they signify what I have been and what I am? One can sometimes see more clearly in a person who is lying than in one who is telling the truth. Like light, truth dazzles. Untruth, on the other hand, is a beautiful dusk that enhances everything. — Albert Camus

Sometimes accepting truth as truth is untruth. — Santosh Kalwar

Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd. — Soren Kierkegaard

Opposition to the truth is inevitable, especially if it takes the form of a new idea, but the degree of resistance can be diminished- by giving thought not only to the aim but to the method of approach. Avoid a frontal attack on a long established position; instead, seek to turn it by flank movement, so that a more penetrable side is exposed to the thrust of truth. But, in any such indirect approach, take care not to diverge from the truth- for nothing is more fatal to its real advancement than to lapse into untruth. — B.H. Liddell Hart

We have only one consciousness stream. When we associate with Truth, we ascend upwards, and when we associate with untruth we fall down. — Tulsi

People tend to focus on the "magic" more than the "realism." But, like all fiction, fantasy arrives at truth via the road of untruth. — Salman Rushdie

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day:
- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering. — Mahatma Gandhi

Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found together — Mahatma Gandhi

Lying is a crime the least liable to variation in its definitions. A child will upon the slightest temptation tell an untruth as readily as the truth. That is, as soon as he can suspect that it will be to his advantage; and the dread that he afterward has of telling a lie is acquired principally by his being threatened, punished, and terrified by those who detect him in it, till at length, a number of painful impressions are annexed to the telling of an untruth, and he comes even to shudder at the thought of it. — Joseph Priestley

The capacity to accept suffering for the sake of goodness, truth and justice is an essential criterion of humanity, because if my own well-being and safety are ultimately more important than truth and justice, then the power of the stronger prevails, then violence and untruth reigns supreme. — Pope Benedict XVI

To generate untruth, you have to do a lot of things. For truth, there is nothing to do - anyway it is there. — Sadghuru

The time has come for America to hear the truth about this tragic war. In international conflicts, the truth is hard to come by because most nations are deceived about themselves. Rationalizations and the incessant search for scapegoats are the psychological cataracts that blind us to our sins. But the day has passed for superficial patriotism. He who lives with untruth lives in spiritual slavery. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Truth, like light is dazzling. By contrast, untruth is a beautiful sunset that enhances everything. — Albert Camus

The truth, it is felt, becomes untruth when your enemy utters it. — George Orwell

I'll tell you this much. Men think memories are like murals or statues or truth or whatever happened, never changes none. But that ain't so. They can capture the untruth of something, just as easy. They can change, especially as time leads to time.
( ... )
To each man himself, his memories seems as solid and factual as a stone mosaic, an urn he could turn around and heft, a flower he could sniff. But when I go inside another, I don't see it or feel it like that. Everything is shimmery, shifting, like it's bathed in mist and shadow, like ... like walking down the foggiest street you can think of, with everything looking not like itself at all. — Jeff Salyards

My great longing is to learn to make those very incorrectnesses, those deviations, remodellings, changes of reality, so that they may become, yes, untruth if you like - but more true than the literal truth. — Vincent Van Gogh

Is that true?
There is truth in it.
And lies as well?
There is an untruth, and an exaggeration. — George R R Martin

Truth and untruth weave the seamless web of human nature. — William Barrett

I can never feel that the Illusion of Life is a truth as long as any illusion reflects unreality; however, even an untruth is a truth in its turn. — Sorin Cerin

One or many believers don't determine the truth or untruth. — Frank Sonnenberg

The subtlest lie of all is the full truth. — Michael Moorcock

Did you know that a glass of warm water with lemon juice in the morning will "activate your body's natural detoxifying and cleansing process"? As with most health ideas, there's truth mixed with a lot of untruth. Yes, lemon has an antioxidant that has been shown to activate liver enzymes that are part of detoxification processes, but you'd need about five liters (or more than 1.25 gallons) of straight lemon juice to reach the 500mg effective dose of the antioxidant. D'oh! — Scott Kustes

Not all deceptions are palatable. Untruths are too easy to come by, too quickly exploded, too cheap and ephemeral to give lasting comfort. Mundus vult decipi, but there is a hierarchy of deceptions.
Near the bottom of the ladder is journalism: a steady stream of irresponsible distortions that most people find refreshing although on the morning after, or at least within a week, it will be stale and flat.
On a higher level we find fictions that men eagerly believe, regardless of the evidence, because they gratify some wish.
Near the top of the ladder we encounter curious mixtures of untruth and truth that exert a lasting fascination on the intellectual community. — Walter Kaufmann

Truth alone triumphs, not untruth. Through truth alone lies the way to Devayana (the way to the gods). Those who think that a little sugar - coating of untruth helps the spread of truth are mistaken and will find in the long run that a single drop of poison poisons the whole mass ... The man who is pure, and who dares, does all things. — Swami Vivekananda

Truth quenches untruth, love quenches anger, self-suffering quenches violence. This eternal rule is a rule not for saints only but for all. — Mahatma Gandhi

Humble mistake will not hurt us: the truth is there, and the Lord will see that we come to know it. We may think we know it when we have scarce a glimpse of it; but the error of a true heart will not be allowed to ruin it. Certainly that heart would not have mistaken the truth except for the untruth yet remaining in it; but he who casts out devils will cast out that devil. — George MacDonald

Granted that we want the truth: WHY NOT RATHER untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance? The problem of the value of truth presented itself before us - or was it we who presented ourselves before the problem? — Friedrich Nietzsche

Indeed our survival and liberation depend upon our recognition of the truth when it is spoken and lived by the people. If we cannot recognize the truth, then it cannot liberate us from untruth. To know the truth is to appropriate it, for it is not mainly reflection and theory. Truth is divine action entering our lives and creating the human action of liberation. — James H. Cone

If the soul is impartial in receiving information, it devotes to that information the share of critical investigation the information deserves, and its truth or untruth thus becomes clear. However, if the soul is infected with partisanship for a particular opinion or sect, it accepts without a moment's hesitation the information that is agreeable to it. Prejudice and partisanship obscure the critical faculty and preclude critical investigation. The results is that falsehoods are accepted and transmitted. — Ibn Khaldun

True and false are attributes of speech not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither truth nor falsehood. Error theremay be, as when we expect that which shall not be; or suspect what has not been: but in neither case can a man be charged with untruth. — Thomas Hobbes

Truth is always truth, untruth is always untruth. This is what matters, this is right desire. — Gautama Buddha

The first law for the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

The price that one pays for refusing to act on the truth as one sees it, is to be led to believe untruth to avoid guilt. — Kenneth L. Pike

People who tell untruths are easily deceived because they have placed their energy in that negative vibration location and are now a match for that behavior. — Molly Friedenfeld

What we are probably given is a mixture of truth and untruth. It's anybody's guess as to which part is which and how much there is of each. — Ira Levin

Tom Wright has reminded us, "There is a persistent untruth which has made its way into the popular imagination in our day: that Christianity means closing off your mind, ceasing all serious thought, and living in a shallow fantasy world divorced from the solid truths of 'real life. ' " "But," he continues, "the truth is that genuine Christianity opens the mind [as Paul has been saying throughout this letter (to the Ephesians), and in its companion piece, the letter to Colossae], so that it can grasp truth at deeper and deeper levels."[11] — Malcolm Jeeves

There is not a single untruth, no -but after ten lines Truth shrieks, she runs distraught and disheveled through her temple's corridors; she does not know herself. 'I can endure lies,' she cries. 'I cannot survive this stifling verisimilitude — Thornton Wilder

You may use a thousand words for a single lie, but the truth has no twin. — Michael Bassey Johnson

The whispering of the truth is stronger than the thunderstorm of the untruth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. — Mahatma Gandhi

When we are in the dream state, we do not know what we are doing. We are simply acting out of deep programming. But once we have seen the true nature of things
once Spirit has opened its eyes within us
we suddenly know what we're doing. There's a much more accurate sense of whether we're moving or speaking or even thinking from truth or not. When we act from a place of untruth anyway, in spite of our knowing, it's much more painful than we we didn't know our actions were untrue. When we say something to someone that we know is untrue, it causes an inner division that is vastly more painful than when we said the same thing and thought it was true. — Adyashanti

At each moment, our seemingly objective world emerges from the dancing of consciousness with a single untruth: that there is something out there which is not us. — Eric Micha'el Leventhal

Truthfulness. He will never willingly tolerate an untruth, but will hate it as much as he loves truth ... And is there anything more closely connected with wisdom than truth? — Plato

What truth? You see where truth is, and where untruth is, but I seem to have lost my sight and see nothing. You boldly settle all important questions, but tell me, dear, isn't it because you're young, because you haven't had time to suffer till you settled a single one of your questions? You boldly look forward, isn't it because you cannot foresee or expect anything terrible, because so far life has been hidden from your young eyes? You are bolder, more honest, deeper than we are, but think only, be just a little magnanimous, and have mercy on me. — Anton Chekhov

One should stick by one's soul, and by nothing else. In one's soul, one knows the truth from the untruth, and life from death. And if one betrays one's own soul-knowledge one is the worst of traitors. — D.H. Lawrence

With the truth on your side, you are powerful even if you are all alone; with the untruth on your side, you are weak even if you are backed by billions! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Insistence on truth can come into play when one party practices untruth or injustice. Only then can love be tested. True friendship is put to the test only when one party disregards the obligation of friendship. — Mahatma Gandhi

'Twould be easy to say 'tis a gift, but 'twould also be an untruth. Beauty and compliments are always to be found in the truth, when not maliciously brought to light. — Sam Knight

The more we read God's truths and let truth fill our minds, the less time we'll spend contemplating untruths. — Lysa TerKeurst

A new untruth is better than an old truth. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

Spirit is the only truth within us, the rest is all untruth. — Nirmala Srivastava

The History of Truth

In that ago when being was believing,
Truth was the most of many credibles,
More first, more always, than a bat-winged lion,
A fish-tailed dog or eagle-headed fish,
The least like mortals, doubted by their deaths.

Truth was their model as they strove to build
A world of lasting objects to believe in,
Without believing earthenware and legend,
Archway and song, were truthful or untruthful:
The Truth was there already to be true.

This while when, practical like paper-dishes,
Truth is convertible to kilowatts,
Our last to do by is an anti-model,
Some untruth anyone can give the lie to,
A nothing no one need believe is there. — W. H. Auden

A myth ... is a metaphor for a mystery beyond human comprehension. It is a comparison that helps us understand, by analogy, some aspect of our mysterious selves. A myth, in this way of thinking, is not an untruth but a way of reaching a profound truth. — Christopher Vogler

They who imagine truth in untruth and see untruth in truth will never arrive at the truth. — Gautama Buddha

We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth. — Swami Vivekananda

A half-truth masquerading as a whole truth becomes a complete untruth — J.I. Packer

Somehow, it bothered her watching Garth's charm directed so effectively at another. Could he convince her so easily of an untruth? — Colleen Chen

Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad. — George Orwell

A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism. — Mahatma Gandhi

What may appear as the truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appeared to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. — Mahatma Gandhi

There is one domain in which untruth is insupportable, that field of the human soul's endeavor of which Truth is the very substance and being, - religion — Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Seek truth! Seek truth in the darkness, under the oceans, above the clouds; seek it everywhere and every time! Stop deceiving yourself with untruth, seek truth! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The truth can only be absolute as any relativity may include the untruth towards the system of reference where it varies. — Sorin Cerin

A wise man could not be insulted, since truth could not insult and untruth was not worthy of notice. — Robert A. Heinlein