Famous Quotes & Sayings

Robert Green Ingersoll

Nothing but truth is immortal.

Robert Green Ingersoll

It cannot be too often repeated, that truth scorns the assistance of miracle.

Robert Green Ingersoll

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, - never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.

Roger Bacon

As regards authority I so proceed. Boetius says in the second prologue to his Arithmetic, 'If an inquirer lacks the four parts of mathematics, he has very little ability to discover truth.' And again, 'Without this theory no one can have a correct insight into truth.' And he says also, 'I warn the man who spurns these paths of knowledge that he cannot philosophize correctly.' And Again, 'It is clear that whosoever passes these by, has lost the knowledge of all learning.'

Roger Bacon

[I]f in other sciences we should arrive at certainty without doubt and truth without error, it behooves us to place the foundations of knowledge in mathematics, in so far as disposed through it we are able to reach certainty in other sciences and truth by the exclusion of error.

Rupert Sheldrake

In practice, the goal of skepticism is not the discovery of truth, but the exposure of other people's errors. It plays a useful role in science, religion, scholarship, and common sense. But we need to remember that it is a weapon serving belief or self-interest; we need to be skeptical of skeptics. The more militant the skeptic, the stronger the belief.

W. H. Auden

The most important truths are likely to be those which society at that time least wants to hear.

William Cowper

All truth is precious, if not all divine; and what dilates the powers must needs refine.

William Cowper

Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true,- A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew.

William Cowper

But what is truth? 'Twas Pilate's question put To Truth itself, that deign'd him no reply.

William Cowper

Ceremony leads her bigots forth, prepared to fight for shadows of no worth. While truths, on which eternal things depend, can hardly find a single friend.

William Cowper

And diff'ring judgments serve but to declare that truth lies somewhere, if we knew but where.

William Cowper

A fool must now and then be right, by chance

Ursula K. Le Guin

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That's the truth!

William Allen White

The facts fairly and honestly presented; truth will take care of itself.

William Allen White

You say that freedom of utterance is not for time of stress, and I reply with the sad truth that only in time of stress is freedom of utterance in danger? Only when free utterance is suppressed is it needed, and when it is needed it is most vital to justice.

Wilfred Owen

All the poet can do today is warn. That is why true Poets must be truthful.

Washington Allston

If the whole world should agree to speak nothing but truth, what an abridgment it would make of speech! And what an unravelling there would be of the invisible webs which men, like so many spiders, now weave about each other!

W. Somerset Maugham

If truth is a value it is because it is true and not because it is brave to speak it.

W. Somerset Maugham

It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

W. Somerset Maugham

Anyone can tell the truth, but only very few of us can make epigrams.

Vladimir Nabokov

Alas! In vain historians pry and probe: The same wind blows, and in the same live robe Truth bends her head to fingers curved cupwise; And with a woman's smile and a child's care Examines something she is holding there Concealed by her own shoulder from our eyes.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Calculating people are contemptable. The reason for this is that calculation deals with loss and gain, and the loss and gain mind never stops. Death is considered loss and life is considered gain. Thus, death is something that such a person does not care for, and he is contemptable. Furthermore, scholars and their like are men who with wit and speech hide their own true cowardice and greed. People often misjudge this.

William P. Young

Truth will set you free. And Truth has a name...

William Penn

Naked Truth needs no shift.

William Penn

The usefullest truths are plainest; and while we keep to them, our differences cannot rise high.

William Penn

Truth never lost ground by enquiry.

William Penn

Tis the glory of a man to vail to truth; as it is the mark of a good nature to be easily entreated.

William Penn

The usefulest truths are the plainest.

William Penn

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

William Penn

There is a truth and beauty in rhetoric; but it oftener serves ill turns than good ones.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

When truth is replaced by silence,the silence is a lie.

Zig Ziglar

You cannot perform in a manner inconsistent with the way you see yourself.