Quotes & Sayings About Truthfulness

It is said that the history of peoples who have a history is the history of class struggle. It might be said with at least as much truthfulness, that the history of peoples without history is a history of their struggle against the state. — Pierre Clastres

How can one respect people as members of the human race unless one holds them to a standard of conduct and truthfulness? — Theodore Dalrymple

I struggle between what I know is right in my own mind, and some warped truthfulness as seen through other people's eyes who have no heart, and can't see the difference anyway. — Ian Curtis

Paradigms power perception and perceptions power emotions. Most emotions are responses to perception - what you think is true about a given situation. If your perception is false, then your emotional response to it will be false too. So check your perceptions, and beyond that check the truthfulness of your paradigms - what you believe. Just because you believe something firmly doesn't make it true. Be willing to reexamine what you believe. — Wm. Paul Young

A lie is my attempt to tamper with the truth so that I need not face the truth. Yet as shrewd as I think myself to be, I would be wise to understand that God designed truth as ultimately tamper-proof. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Uplift & Inspire, do not be envious of others success. You are given the same hours in a day. Make it worthwhile! Instead of focusing on what someone else is doing, pay attention to how you're living and make the best of life — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

This generation must know that the total truthfulness of the bible is under continual assault ... — Albert Mohler

It is not perhaps a question of truthfulness; it is rather a natural incapacity to think for herself, to take cognizance of herself in her own brain, and not in the eyes and in the lips of others; even when the ingenuously write into little secret diaries, women think of the unknown god reading
perhaps
over their shoulders. With a similar nature, a woman, to be placed in the first ranks of men, would require even higher genius than that of the highest man; that is why, if the conspicuous works of men themselves, the finest works of women are always inferior to the worth of the women who produced them. — Remy De Gourmont

I have never described this to you before, not so much, I don't think, from lack of truthfulness as that, just naturally, one is not going to explain to people at large that from time to time one vomits up a small rabbit. — Julio Cortazar

To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully-constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them; to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy; — George Orwell

But whatever any of them thought one thing was always certain: even though they suffered and had to struggle at times to bring meaning and even the most basic dignity into their existence and even though in their search for justice and truthfulness they were beaten down and met with disappointment again and again - their lives were not available for use as an illustration. Theirs were not stories that could be read as an affirmation of another system. — Nadeem Aslam

But the point is: On the right, they're pretending that our "truthfulness" is what's really important to them. Which, ironically, is not true. What matters to them is discrediting anything that they believe harms their side. That is their prime directive. And unlike Kirk, they fuckin' stick with it. They don't just drop the protocol any time they feel like humping a green girl in a unitard. [video clip of Captain Kirk, pursuing a green girl in a unitard]

And this, this, is their genius. Conservatives are not looking to make education more rigorous and informative, or science more empirical or verifiable, or voting more representative, or the government more efficient or effective. They just want all those things to reinforce their partisan, ideological, conservative viewpoint.
~ Jon Stewart — Chris Smith

The witness of the Holy Ghost is even more compelling than the witness of sight. As members of the Church, we become witnesses of the Savior and the truthfulness of this work not only in word but also in keeping our covenants and in how we treat others and in how we live our everyday lives. — Loren C. Dunn

But what I liked in Aberdeen was what I liked generally in Britain: the bread, the fish, the cheese, the flower gardens, the apples. the clouds, the newspapers, the beer, the wollen cloth, the radio programmes, the parks, the Indian restaurants and amateur dramatics, the postal service, the fresh vegetables, the trains, and the modesty and truthfulness of people. — Paul Theroux

A dispassionate conceptual development of the typology of violence must by definition ignore its traumatic impact. Yet there is a sense in which a cold analysis of violence somehow reproduces and participates in its horror. A distinction needs to be made, as well, between (factual) truth and truthfulness: what renders a report of a raped woman (or any other narrative of a trauma) truthful is its very factual unreliability, its confusion, its inconsistency. If the victim were able to report on her painful and humiliating experience in a clear manner, with all the data arranged in a consistent order, this very quality would make us suspicious of its truth. — Slavoj Zizek

It is important to insist on the historical truthfulness of the narrative of the fall of Adam and Eve. Just as the account of the creation of Adam and Eve is tied in with the rest of the historical narrative in the book of Genesis, so also this account of the fall of man, which follows the history of man's creation, is presented by the author as straightforward, narrative history — Wayne Grudem

Perhaps, indeed, there are no truly universal ethics: or to put it more precisely, the ways in which ethical principles are interpreted will inevitably differ across cultures and eras. Yet, these differences arise chiefly at the margins. All known societies embrace the virtues of truthfulness, integrity, loyalty, fairness; none explicitly endorse falsehood, dishonesty, disloyalty, gross inequity. (Five Minds for the Future, p136) — Howard Gardner

Character is far more important than intellect in making a man a good citizen or successful at his calling- meaning by character not only such qualities as honesty and truthfulness, but courage, perseverance and self-reliance. — Theodore Roosevelt

Your success in worldly life (sansar) is in proportion to your faith and truthfulness! — Dada Bhagwan

Truthfulness is the real mark of integrity. — Brian Tracy

The people who enlighten us are the ones who tell us their secrets. — Marty Rubin

The real truthfulness of all works of imagination, sculpture, painting, and written fiction, is so purely in the imagination, that the artist never seeks to represent positive truth, but the idealized image of a truth — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

A conflict arises when a religious community insists on the absolute truthfulness of all statements recorded in the Bible. This means an intervention on the part of religion into the sphere of science; this is where the struggle of the Church against doctrines of Galileo and Darwin belongs. — Albert Einstein

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.
[Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America; Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, February 26, 1962] — John F. Kennedy

I spent hours apart by myself, taking stock of where I stood, mentally, on this my thirtieth birthday. It came to me queerly how, four years ago, I had meant to be a general and knighted, when thirty. Such temporal dignities were now in my grasp, only that my sense of falsity of the Arab position had cured me of crude ambition: while it left me craving for good repute among men. This craving made me profoundly suspect my truthfulness to myself. Only too good an actor could so impress his favorable opinion. Here were the Arabs believing me, Allenby and Clayton trusting me, my bodyguard dying for me: and I began to wonder if all established reputations were founded, like mine, on fraud. — T.E. Lawrence

Truthfulness requires humility as well as courage. — Marty Rubin

Words are so often used in the opposite sense, as a screen of diversion. It's the struggle towards truthfulness which is the same whether one is writing a poem, a novel or an argument. — John Berger

You cannot be who you are not.
Simply rest, sit still and unknot.
You may even try to emulate and inspire,
But it's the inner self that you'll transpire. — Ana Claudia Antunes

Two things are owed to truthfulness: lasting marriages and short friendships. — Robert Breault

They will only care when you're gone. — Marilyn Monroe

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it. God's saving love in Christ, however, is marked by both radical truthfulness about who we are and yet also radical, unconditional commitment to us. The merciful commitment strengthens us to see the truth about ourselves and repent. The conviction and repentance moves us to cling to and rest in God's mercy and grace. — Timothy Keller

In any given situation there will always be more dumb people than smart people. We ain't many! — Ken Kesey

My role as a producer is very specific. It's maintaining the creative truthfulness, day in and day out. — Jeffrey Donovan

Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future. — Dalai Lama

Never hesitate to tell the truth as you see it. — Marty Rubin

[Philosophers] are not honest enough in their work, although they make a lot of virtuous noise when the problem of truthfulness is touched even remotely. They all pose as if they had discovered and reached their real opinions through the self-development of a cold, pure, divinely unconcerned dialectic ... ; while at bottom it is an assumption, a hunch, indeed a kind of "inspiration" most often a desire of the heart that has been filtered and made abstract that they defend with reasons they have sought after the fact. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There is a road to freedom. Its milestones are obedience, endeavour, honesty, order, cleanliness, sobriety, truthfulness, sacrifice, and love of the fatherland. — Adolf Hitler

A young woman who knows and loves the Book of Mormon, who has read it several times, who has an abiding testimony of its truthfulness, and who applies its teachings will be able to stand against the wiles of the devil and will be a mighty tool in the hands of the Lord. — Ezra Taft Benson

Satyagraha means insistence on what one knows to be the truth. The insistence implies the exercise of free will as the need of social obligation. If one is content to know the truth himself, he does not become a votary of Satyagraha. A Satyagrahi should not only know the truth but should insist upon it in social relations. So Satyagraha is activation of truthfulness. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

The eye speaks with an eloquence and truthfulness surpassing speech. It is the window out of which the winged thoughts often fly unwittingly. It is the tiny magic mirror on whose crystal surface the moods of feeling fitfully play, like the sunlight and shadow on a still stream. — Henry Theodore Tuckerman

You have the power to shape your life the way you want it to be. Every though, every word, every action guides you with a purpose. And that purpose is to fulfill your destiny. Some may say you're just a dreamer. But everything imagined began with a dream. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

What matters," said the prince at last, "is that you have a child's trusting nature and extraordinary truthfulness. Do you know that a great deal can be forgiven you for that alone? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The American people deserve truthfulness, not more political campaigning. The American people deserve a responsible government that seeks to address their needs, not more ideological dogma. — Jose Serrano

The dignity of history consists in reciting events with truth and accuracy, and in presenting human agents and their actions in an interesting and instructive form. The first element in history, therefore, is truthfulness; and this truthfulness must be displayed in a concrete form. — Daniel Webster

Trust is not simply a matter of truthfulness, or even constancy. It is also a matter of amity and goodwill. We trust those who have our best interests at heart, and mistrust those who seem deaf to our concerns. — Gary Hamel

hypocrisy; rejecting what you firmly have in your fist — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The statistics reveal a failure of nerve on the part of many Christians. They seem to be simply unable to muster the strength necessary to develop a tenacious commitment to the truthfulness of Scripture. — Douglas Groothuis

Sometimes our wants or needs have nothing to do with being ungrateful and everything to do with making a mistake. — Shannon L. Alder

What emerges from these separate strands of (modern) history is an image of man himself that bears a new, stark, more nearly naked, and more questionable aspect. The contraction of man's horizons amounts to a denudation, a stripping down, of this being who has now to confront himself at the center of all his horizons. The labor of modern culture, whenever it has been authentic, has been a labor of denudation. A return to the sources; "to the things themselves," as Husserl puts it; toward a new truthfulness, the casting away of ready-made presuppositions and empty forms - these are some of the slogans under which this phase in history has presented itself. Naturally enough, much of this stripping down must appear as the work of destruction, as revolutionary or even "negative": a being who has become thoroughly questionable to himself must also find questionable his relation to the total past which in a sense he represents. — William Barrett

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

Oh, I remember, I remember all those moments! And I want to add, too, that when such young creatures, such sweet young creatures want to say something so clever and profound, they show at once so truthfully and naively in their faces, "Here I am saying something clever and profound now" - and that is not from vanity, as it is with any one like me, but one sees that she appreciates it awfully herself, and believes in it, and thinks a lot of it, and imagines that you think a lot of all that, just as she does. Oh, truthfulness! It's by that they conquer us. How exquisite it was in her! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Sure. Happy to do it,' I say. In terms of level of truthfulness, that statement would rank with something like, 'Damn, I'm going to be traveling to Saturn that day to go giraffe hunting. — David Rosenfelt

In the last few years I've become an accepted eccentric at best, and a fuckup at worst. I feel like I'll let people down if I take away the behavior they've grown accustomed to disapproving of. They try to discipline me, I refuse to be disciplined. They object, I'm objectionable. We all know exactly what to do. — Carrie Fisher

A woman, she is born with the power to save and love, her existence is based on the truthfulness in her eyes. — Swapna Rajput

It is essential that our present negative propaganda regarding psychedelic drugs be replaced with honesty and truthfulness about their effects, both good and bad. — Alexander Shulgin

Understanding comes with compassion and compassion comes with truthfulness — Amit Abraham

There's the artist's intimacy and truthfulness to himself, but an equal intimacy to the Other [the one drawn]. Picasso drawings are like that ... the Rembrandts are like that. The artist who most often did that was Van Gogh. — John Berger

Absolute truthfulness, and conscience as its manifestation, are within everybody. Acknowledging it is wisdom, and living it is virtue. — Ilchi Lee

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other, but it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves. — Rebecca West

Claiming that you are what you are not will obscure the strengths you do have while destroying your credibility. — Tom Hayes

Some level of truthfulness has always been seen as essential to human society, no matter how deficient the observance of other moral principles. — Sissela Bok

If you don't find the right set of eyes to see through your bull, you will always be surrounded by friends that will tell you white lies because they like your company and don't want to ruin the evening. — Shannon L. Alder

Lying is forbidden in Iraq. President Saddam Hussein will tolerate nothing but truthfulness as he is a man of great honour and integrity. Everyone is encouraged to speak freely of the truths evidenced in their eyes and hearts. — Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf

Truthfulness is composed of justice and courage. — Ibn Hazm

From his childhood on he had had an obstinate nature and his name became a byword for virtue and truthfulness. "That's incredible, even if Cato says so," was a common expression. — Anthony Everitt

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it is always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals come easily. — Cormac McCarthy

Winston sank his arms to his sides and slowly refilled his lungs with air. His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself - that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink. — George Orwell

At the very moment when we refuse to follow our conscience and refuse to be truthful, we become all the more aware of the presence of conscience and the absolute truthfulness inside. — Ilchi Lee

In truth, nothing could be more opposed to the purely aesthetic interpretation and justification of the world which are taught in this book than the Christian teaching, which is, and wants to be, only moral and which relegates art, every art, to the realm of lies; with its absolute standards, beginning with the truthfulness of God, it negates, judges, and damns art. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Selflessness. Humility. Truthfulness. These are the three marks of an honorable man. — Suzy Kassem

I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly. — Rainn Wilson

On the contrary, anyone speaking or writing about concentration camps is still regarded as suspect; and if the speaker has resolutely returned to the world of the living, he himself is often assailed by doubts with regard to his own truthfulness, as though he had mistaken a nightmare for reality. — Hannah Arendt

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

The truth will not necessarily set you free, but truthfulness will. — Ken Wilber

Goodness, beauty, truthfulness, honesty, and being virtuous are the essence of the world. Whatever happens, the world will one day find this essence, for no one can prevent such an event — M. Fethullah Gulen

The chief beauty of this book lies not so much in its literary style, or in the extent and usefulness of the information it conveys, as in its simple truthfulness. — Jerome K. Jerome

The only real and reliable guarantee for khadi would be honesty, truthfulness and sincerity of khadi workers. — Mahatma Gandhi

Who do you want them to think you are? How do you think people see you? Or don't you let them near enough to see. You make up their minds for them. Do you think you succeed in convincing people that you are what you seem to be? You make people meet you on your own territory. You don't help them. You let them verbally hang themselves and then feel better about yourself, your power, your own sense of worth. You have the power to alienate them and if they allow it, you might even manage to make them feel awkward and foolish--foolish for letting you affect them at all. Do you want them to like you? Or are you one of those people who "don't care what people think." You're not living your life for them, so why should you give a fuck what people think? You make people come to you and, when they eventually do, you punish them with your smugness. Nothing ever out of character. — Carrie Fisher

Look at the truth from how it stands, not where it comes from. The truth is still the truth no matter whether it is spoken by an Indian, an American, a Chinese, an European, an African or an Australian! — Israelmore Ayivor

In this walk to freedom, we must, without question obtain hearts of honesty and a tongue of truthfulness. — The Tru Sum

I see You, Every time I look into Buddha's eyes. I give myself to You. Every time I alter one of Your 1,000s names. Honestly & fully I love You. Through Christ and Maria, Shiva and Shakti, Krishna and Radha, With every day that passes and every breath I take. I enter gratitude for receiving Your Love. Obeying Your Laws of Truthfulness and Ahimsa, Weaving Prana With hearts and souls of Gaia. Through mysticism, shamanism, sufism, and ecstatic meditations. I yearn to touch You, to feel You, to be You. Within this amazing Journey of Awareness of Your Consciousness. — Natasa Nuit Pantovic

Our purpose in this life is to live in higher consciousness and to teach others to live in higher consciousness. But the best test to that consciousness is humility, selflessness, and sweetness. When you teach, teach with honesty, truthfulness, and straightforwardness. As a teacher, never compromise. As a man, always compromise. The teacher who compromises is an idiot; a person who does not compromise is an idiot. Because the teacher does not teach for himself, but for the higher consciousness. And higher consciousness will never compromise with lower consciousness. This is a straight law and that has to be considered as a law; that has to be observed as a law. — Yogi Bhajan

If the truth gets in the way, I will remove it. But truth be told, removing the truth never removes the truth. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

The insistence on truthfulness does not disturb the freedom of the individual. The social obligation implied in Satyagraha turns the freedom of the individual into moral freedom. An atheist is free to say or to do what he likes, provided he does what he says and says what he does. So, in the context of social relations, the freedom of the individual is moral freedom. — Goparaju Ramachandra Rao

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgement free. — Gabrielle Roy

I think I sense a tone of honesty, if honesty exists in this world. — Emilyann Girdner

In the sphere of natural investigation, as in poetry and painting, the delineation of that which appeals most strongly to the imagination, derives its collective interest from the vivid truthfulness with which the individual features are portrayed. — David Hume

That's my goal, is to stay in a truthful place. And sometimes that means writing a silly song, or singing about sex or singing about environmental destruction or heartbreak, or my grandmother. The subject isn't what the core is about, it's about truthfulness and authenticity and that just comes from my heart and soul. — Mirah

With the disintegration of all that [Nietzsche] had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition. — Karl Jaspers

Love given without free will or truthfulness wasn't love at all. — Cassandra Clare

A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank after many a poor and illiterate peasant. — Samuel Smiles

Both transparency and trust form the basic component of truth itself. With truth, there is no need to be untrue. If one is truthful, then there is godliness because God is truth. And when godliness is on your side, success is guaranteed. — Vishwas Chavan

I would not have majored in English and gone on to teach literature had I not been able to construct a counterargument about the truthfulness of fiction; still, as writers turn away from the industrious villages of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy, I learn less and less from them that helps me to ponder my life. In time, I found myself agreeing with the course evaluations written by my testier freshman students:'All the literature we read this term was depressing.' How naive. How sane. — Mary Rose O'Reilley

Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. — Dodie Smith

It's hard to remember who you were when you're constantly pretending to be someone you're not. — Amy Ewing

Ages of prolonged uncertainty, while they are compatible with the highest degree of saintliness in a few, are inimical to the prosaic every-day virtues of respectable citizens. There seems no use in thrift, when tomorrow all your savings may be dissipated; no advantage in honesty, when the man towards whom you practise it is pretty sure to swindle you; no point in steadfast adherence to the cause, when no cause is important or has a chance of stable victory; no argument in favour of truthfulness, when only supple tergiversation makes the preservation of life and fortune possible. The man whose virtue has no source except a purely terrestrial prudence will in such a world, become an adventurer if he has the courage, and, if not, will seek obscurity as a timid time-server. — Bertrand Russell

Meditation is silence. If you realize that you really know nothing, then you will be truly meditating. Such truthfulness is the right soil for silence. Silence is meditation. — Yogaswami

He had found in himself the perfect, undeniable case of insanity. He possessed wisdom, patience, tolerance, truthfulness, loyalty, and moral fortitude - all the qualities that go to make an utter madman. — Machado De Assis

Politeness responses you with the cheers of truthfulness. — Jeswant Gembali

When we begin to understand the magnitude of [the Messiah's] sacrifice and service to us individually and collectively, we then cannot consider anything else to be of more importance or to approach His significance in our lives. For most of us, this understanding does not come all at once and likely will not be fully complete during our mortal sojourn. We do know, however, that as we learn line upon line, our appreciation for the Savior's contributions will increase and our knowledge and assurance of their truthfulness will grow. — Cecil O. Samuelson