Sourced and curated.

So poetry is something more philosophical and more worthy of serious attention than history, for while poetry is concerned with universal truth, history treats of particular facts.

Aristotle

Poetics · 335 BC

★ 1.3

Poem · Didactic poem · Philosophical literature

Truths kindle light for truths.

Lucretius

On the Nature of Things · 55 BC

★ 1.3

Scripture · Religious literature

Do not veil the truth with vanity, nor conceal the truth wittingly.

Muhammad

The Quran, The Koran, 2:42 · 632

★ 1.4

Speech · Political speech

A platitude is simply a truth repeated until people get tired of hearing it.

Stanley Baldwin

1924

★ 1.8

Magazine

You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that.

Gerald Brenan

1986

★ 1.8

To truth only a brief celebration of victory is allowed between the two long periods during which it is condemned as paradoxical, or disparaged as trivial.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The World as Will and Idea · 1818

★ 1.9

Short story

Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction...For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.

G.K. Chesterton

1905

★ 1.9

Novel · Southern gothic

I preach that there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth.

Flannery O'Connor

1952

★ 1.9

Play

Truth is not merely what we are thinking, but also why, to whom, and under what circumstances we say it.

Vaclav Havel

1985

★ 1.9

Religious literature

The Lord says in the gospel; "I am the Truth." He does not say "I am custom." Therefore, when the truth is made manifest, custom must give way to truth.

Libosus of Vaga

Augustine of Hippo, On Baptism, Against the Donatists · 400

★ 1.9

Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers.

William Penn

1682

★ 1.9

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

1787

★ 1.9

Speech

Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true.

Demosthenes

349 BC

★ 2.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

There are very few lovers of truth for truth-sake, even among those who persuade themselves that they are so. How a man may know whether he be so in earnest, is worth inquiry: and I think there is one unerring mark of it, viz. The not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant. Whoever goes beyond this measure of assent, it is plain, receives not truth in the love of it, loves not truth for truth-sake, but for some other by-end.

John Locke

An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding · 1690

★ 2.0

Beauty is truth, truth beauty.

John Keats

Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819 · 1820

★ 2.0

An exaggeration is a truth that has lost its temper.

Kahlil Gibran

1926

★ 2.0

Letter

And seek for truth in the groves of Academe.

Horace

14 BC

★ 2.1

Play · Comedy (play)

Truth will come to light.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The Merchant of Venice · 1598

★ 2.1

Isaac Newton

1680

★ 2.1

Open letter · Letter

Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it.

Emile Zola

1897

★ 2.1

Interview · Magazine

Facts are slippery. The truth is imperfect. Fiction recognizes that.

Salman Rushdie

2015

★ 2.1

Scientific literature

The only certainty is that nothing is certain.

Pliny the Elder

77 BC

★ 2.2

Political literature · Philosophical literature

True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood.

Thomas Hobbes

Leviathan · 1651

★ 2.2

We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power · 1888

★ 2.2

Play · Tragedy (play)

Though thou speakest truth, Methinks thou speak'st not well.

Coriolanus · 1616

★ 2.9

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

Charles Sanders Peirce

1903

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now—always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances.

Albert Schweitzer

1922

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir · Religious literature

A man may be in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet bee forced to surrender.

Sir Thomas Browne

1643

★ 3.5

Magazine

Truth is the object of philosophy, but not always of philosophers.

John Churton Collins

1900

★ 3.5

Essay

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

H.L. Mencken

1922

★ 3.5

Scripture · Religious literature

Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.

Jesus

John 8:32 · 90

★ 3.6

Lecture

It is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

T.H. Huxley

1880

★ 3.6

Political literature

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

Hannah Arendt

The Origins of Totalinarianism · 1951

★ 3.6

Personal journal

Truth exists; only lies are invented.

Georges Braque

1952

★ 3.6

Film · Western (film) · Western

This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.

Maxwell Scott

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance · 1962

★ 3.6

Short story

The truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is.

Nadine Gordimer

1963

★ 3.6

Play · Comedy (play)

Against my soul's pure truth why labor you To make it wander in an unknown field?

Be it art or hap, He hath spoken true.

The Comedy of Errors · 1594

★ 3.7

Play · Tragedy (play)

Antony and Cleopatra · 1607

★ 3.7

For truth is precious and divine Too rich a pearl for carnal swine.

Samuel Butler (poet)

1664

★ 3.7

Truth sits upon the lips of dying men.

Matthew Arnold

1853

★ 3.7

Religious literature

Truth does not blush.

Tertullian

Against the Valentinians · 207

★ 3.8

A Truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the Lies you can invent

William Blake

Auguries of Innocence · 1803

★ 3.8

Novel · Dystopian fiction

Being in a minority, even 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

Nineteen Eighty-Four · 1949

★ 3.8

TV program · Comedy (TV) · Comedy

Truth that comes from the gut, not books.

Stephen Colbert

2005

★ 3.8

Film · Superhero (film) · Crime drama (film) · Superhero · Crime drama

Because sometimes truth isn't good enough. Sometimes, people deserve more. Sometimes, people deserve to have their faith rewarded.

Bruce Wayne/Batman

The Dark Knight · 2008

★ 3.8

Play · Greek tragedy · Tragedy (play)

How dreadful knowledge of the truth can be When there's no help in truth!

Sophocles

Oedipus Rex · 430 BC

★ 3.9

Historical literature

In truth we know nothing, for truth lies in the depth.

Democritus

Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers · 240

★ 3.9

Almanac

The Sting of a Reproach is the Truth of it.

Benjamin Franklin

1746

★ 3.9

Tis strange,—but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction.

Lord Byron

Don Juan · 1823

★ 3.9

Travel writing

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Mark Twain

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World · 1897

★ 3.9

Film · Science fiction (film) · Action (film) · Science fiction · Action

All I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.

Morpheus

The Matrix · 1999

★ 3.9

Play · History (play)

While you live, tell truth and shame the devil!

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry IV, Part 1 · 1597

★ 4.0

Autobiography and memoir

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 4.0