The Quotes canon

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While you live, tell truth and shame the devil! — William Shakespeare · 1597Be it art or hap, He hath spoken true. — William Shakespeare · 1607Against my soul's pure truth why labor you To make it wander in an unknown field? — William Shakespeare · 1594Though thou speakest truth, Methinks thou speak'st not well. — William Shakespeare · 1616Truth will come to light. — William Shakespeare · 1598
Mark Twain3 quotes
Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. — Mark Twain · 1897There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. — Mark Twain · 1884Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t. — Mark Twain · 1897
Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1878We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1888
Isaac Newton2 quotes
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. — Isaac Newton · 1680Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth. — Isaac Newton · 1664
Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word police-the wordinistas-over at Webster's are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books...I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. — Stephen Colbert · 2005Truth that comes from the gut, not books. — Stephen Colbert · 2005
Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651
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
The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even murder with truth. — Alfred Adler · 1929
Aristotle1 quote
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 · 335 BC
How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth? — Arthur Conan Doyle · 1890
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 · 1818
The Sting of a Reproach is the Truth of it. — Benjamin Franklin · 1746
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart. — Blaise Pascal · 1670
Because sometimes truth isn't good enough. Sometimes, people deserve more. Sometimes, people deserve to have their faith rewarded. — Bruce Wayne/Batman · 2008
Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1903
You can't handle the truth! — Col. Nathan R. Jessep · 1992
The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you. — David Foster Wallace · 1996
Democritus1 quote
In truth we know nothing, for truth lies in the depth. — Democritus · 240
Nothing is easier than self-deceit. For what each man wishes, that he also believes to be true. — Demosthenes · 349 BC
Emile Zola1 quote
Truth is on the march, and nothing will stop it. — Emile Zola · 1897
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
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
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 · 1949
Truth exists; only lies are invented. — Georges Braque · 1952
You can't get at the truth by writing history; only the novelist can do that. — Gerald Brenan · 1986
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
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 · 1951
Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854
The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear. — Herbert Agar · 1942
Things get passed around so easily on the internet. And fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact, without anyone stepping in to arbitrate and say, what are your sources? — Hilary Mantel · 2015