Famous Quotes & Sayings

Blaise Pascal

When we do not know the truth of a thing, it is good that there should exist a common error which determines the mind of man, as, for example, the moon, to which is attributed the change of seasons, the progress of diseases, etc. For the chief malady of man is a restless curiosity about things which he cannot understand; and it is not so bad for him to be in error as to be curious to no purpose.

Blaise Pascal

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Blaise Pascal

We have an idea of truth, invincible to all scepticism.

Blaise Pascal

There would be too great darkness, if truth had not visible signs.

Blaise Pascal

It is man's natural sickness to believe that he possesses the Truth.

Blaise Pascal

Imagination is the deceptive part in man, the mistress of error and falsehood.

Blaise Pascal

We know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart. It is through the latter that we know first principles, and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to refute them.

Blaise Pascal

...for the truth is always older than all the opinions men have held regarding it; and one should be ignoring the nature of truth if we imagined that the truth began at the time it came to be known.

Blaise Pascal

What a chimaera then is man, what a novelty, what a monster, what chaos, what a subject of contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, yet an imbecile earthworm; depository of truth, yet a sewer of uncertainty and error; pride and refuse of the universe. Who shall resolve this tangle?

Blaise Pascal

Our senses perceive no extreme. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders ourview. Too great length and too great brevity of discourse tends to obscurity; too much truth is paralyzing.... In short, extremes are for us as though they were not, and we are not within their notice. They escape us, or we them.

Blaise Pascal

Unless we love the truth we cannot know it.

Blaise Pascal

It is not our task to secure the triumph of truth, but merely to fight on its behalf.

Blaise Pascal

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.

Blaise Pascal

Once your soul has been enlarged by a truth, it can never return to its original size.

Donald Tusk

A word of truth can mobilise two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation.

Twyla Tharp

The only way to know the truth of a movement is to do it on your own body.

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.

Bertrand Russell

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Benjamin Disraeli

I say that justice is truth in action.

Benjamin Disraeli

Truth travels slowly, but it will reach even you in time.

Barry Long

Truth does not need argument, agreement, theories or beliefs. There is only one test for it and that is to ask yourself 'Is the statement true or false in my experience?.

Barry Long

The only way we can ever get through to the truth is by finding out what we are not. We do that by looking, by observation.

Barry Long

You must not believe anyone in the search for truth; you have to find out for yourself. But although you are on your own, help will come when it is really needed.

Barry Long

It is a little known fact that truth cannot be memorized. Truth has to be discovered now, from moment to moment. It is always fresh, always new, always there for the still, innocent mind that has experienced life without needing to hold on to what has gone before.

C. S. Lewis

The truth is, of course, that what one regards as interruptions are precisely one's life.