Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry Ward Beecher

Many yet are the secret truths of God which will be unfolded as they are needed.

Henry Ward Beecher

Give us that calm certainty of truth, that nearness to Thee, that conviction of the reality of the life to come, which we shall need to bear us through the troubles of this.

Henry Ward Beecher

Truthfulness is godliness.

Helena Christensen

To tell you the truth, I've never weighed myself. When somebody asks me my statistics or whatever I honestly don't know.

Helen Thomas

You didn't tell a lie, you just left a big hole in the truth.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The man who loves with his whole heart truth will love still more he who suffers for truth.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The greatest of characters, no doubt, would be he, who, free of all trifling accidental helps, could see objects through one grand immutable medium, always at hand, and proof against illusion and time, reflecting every object in its true shape and colour through all the fluctuation of things.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The brilliant passes, like the dew at morn; The true endures, for ages yet unborn.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let there be truth between us.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

One must keep repeating the Truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nothing is more damaging to the truth than an old error.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A stated truth loses its grace, but a repeated error appears insipid and ridiculous.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth must be repeated again and again, because error is constantly being preached round about.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Truth is a torch, but a terrific one; therefore we all try to reach it with closed eyes, lest we should be scorched.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is but one poetry,--true poetry.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is easier to perceive error than to find truth, for the former lies on the surface and is easily seen, while the latter lies in the depth, where few are willing to search for it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love of truth shows itself in this, that a man knows how to find and value the good in everything.

Ayn Rand

There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.

Ayn Rand

Every form has its own meaning. Every man creates his meaning and form and goal. Why is it so important - what others have done? Why does it become sacred by the mere fact of not being your own? Why is anyone and everyone right - so long as it's not yourself? Why does the number of those others take the place of truth? Why is truth made a mere matter of arithmetic - and only of addition at that? Why is everything twisted out of all sense to fit everything else? There must be some reason. I don't know. I've never known it. I'd like to understand.

Ayn Rand

People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.

Bertrand Russell

There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.

Bertrand Russell

In the higher walks of politics the same sort of thing occurs. The statesman who has gradually concentrated all power within himself ... may have had anything but a public motive... The phrases which are customary on the platform and in the Party Press have gradually come to him to seem to express truths, and he mistakes the rhetoric of partisanship for a genuine analysis of motives... He retires from the world after the world has retired from him.

Bertrand Russell

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in infering that he is an inexact man. Every careful measurement in science is always given with the probable error ... every observer admits that he is likely wrong, and knows about how much wrong he is likely to be.

Bertrand Russell

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.

Bertrand Russell

Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.

Bertrand Russell

When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.