Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Paine

But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

Thomas Paine

The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.

Thomas Paine

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

Thomas Huxley

To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

Thomas Huxley

There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.

Thomas Huxley

Veracity is the heart of morality.

Thomas Huxley

The more rapidly truth is spread among mankind the better it will be for them. Only let us be sure that it is the truth.

Thomas Huxley

Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.

Thomas Huxley

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

Thomas Browne

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Thomas Sowell

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.

Thomas Sowell

The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.

Walt Whitman

The truth is simple. If it was complicated, everyone would understand it.

Roger Scruton

When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.

Sara Gruen

With a secret like that, at some point the secret itself becomes irrelevant. The fact that you kept it does not.

Samuel Johnson

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

Samuel Johnson

Truth, such as is necessary to the reputation of life, is always found where it is honestly sought.

Samuel Johnson

Truth has no gradations; nothing which admits of increase can be so much what it is, as truth is truth. There may be a strange thing, and a thing more strange. But if a proposition be true, there can be none more true.

Samuel Johnson

Truth allows no choice.

Samuel Johnson

Liberty is the parent of truth, but truth and decency are sometimes at variance. All men and all propositions are to be treated here as they deserve, and there are many who have no claim either to respect or decency.

Robert Anton Wilson

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

Rob Lowe

The umbrella that I live under is that you must be truthful with everyone except when to do so would injure them or others.

Ricky Jay

If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

Richard M. Nixon

Let us begin by committing ourselves to the truth to see it like it is, and tell it like it is, to find the truth, to speak the truth, and to live the truth.

Richard Rorty

Truth is what your contemporaries let you get away with.

Richard Russo

I can be glib and truthful all at once.

Robert Duvall

There's no right or wrong just truthful or untruthful.

Robert De Niro

There is only one way to gain access to the truth and that is to not expect anything.

Vera Farmiga

Honesty is not synonymous with truth.

Umberto Eco

The truth is an anagram of an anagram.

Robinson Jeffers

The cold passion for truth hunts in no pack.