"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad."
- Aldous Huxley
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"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."
- George Orwell
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"They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth."
- Plato
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"I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell."
- Harry S. Truman
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"I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave.
And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant."
- H.L. Mencken
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"There is nothing so powerful as the truth, and often nothing so strange."
- Daniel Webster
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"The truth that makes men free is, for the most part, the truth which men prefer not to hear."
- Herbert Agar
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"... Socrates was executed not for saying what things were or should be, but for seeking practical indications
of where some reasonable approximation of truth might be. He was executed not for his megalomania or grandiose
propositions or certitudes, but for stubbornly doubting the absolute truths of others."
- John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
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"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things."
- Rene Descartes
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"What are facts but compromises? A fact merely marks the point where we have agreed to let investigation cease."
- Bliss Carman
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"Nothing lays itself open to the charge of exaggeration more than the language of naked truth."
- Joseph Conrad
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"It is a perplexing and unpleasant truth that when men have something worth fighting for, they do not feel like fighting."
- Eric Hoffer
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"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously."
- Thomas Sowell
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"The most gleaming trophy a great man can claim is the discovery of a few truths and the destruction of a few errors."
- Frederick the Great
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"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; truth isn't."
- Mark Twain
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"Much truth is spoken, that more may be concealed."
- Sir Charles Darling
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"As long as someone else controls your history the truth shall remain just a mystery."
- Ben Harper
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"Statistics are like a bikini. What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."
- Aaron Levenstein
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"Truth never plays false roles of any kind, which is why people are so surprised when meeting it. Everyone must decide whether he wants the uncompromising truth or a counterfeit version of the truth. Real wisdom consists of recommending the truth to yourself at every opportunity."
- Vernon Howard
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"An error can never become true however many times you repeat it. The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it."
- Mahatma Ghandi
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"Even if your are in a minority of one, the truth is still the truth."
- Mahatma Ghandi
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"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes.
We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance.
Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men.
We are intellectual prostitutes."
- John Swinton, the Chief of Staff for the New York Times,1953
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"Let go of your attachment to being right, and suddenly your mind is more open.
You're able to benefit from the unique viewpoints of others, without being crippled by your own judgement."
- Ralph Marston
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"I shall adopt new views as fast as they shall appear to be true views."
- Abraham Lincoln
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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."
- Winston Churchill
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Bush's press secretary told reporters after a 1984 debate with his then vice presidential opponent:
"You can say anything you want in a debate, and 80 million people hear it.
If reporters then document that a candidate spoke untruthfully, so what? Maybe 200 people read it, or 2,000, or 20,000."
- Holly Sklar
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"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."
- Thomas Jefferson
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"Totalitarianism demands, in fact, the continuous alteration of the past, and in the long run probably demands a
disbelief in the very existence of objective truth. The friends of totalitarianism in this country usually tend to
argue that since absolute truth is not attainable, a big lie is no worse than a little lie ... It is pointed out that
all historical records are biased and inaccurate, or on the other hand, that modern physics has proven that what seems
to us the real world is an illusion, so that to believe in the evidence of one's senses is simply vulgar philistinism.
A totalitarian society which succeeded in perpetuating itself would probably set up a schizophrenic system of thought,
in which the laws of common sense held good in everyday life and in certain exact sciences, but could be disregarded
by the politician, the historian, and the sociologist."
- George Orwell
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"All truth goes through three stages. First it is ridiculed. Then it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident."
Schopenhauer
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"To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only truth."
- Voltaire
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"If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor."
- Albert Einstein
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"Be patient. It may take thirty years, but sooner or later they'll listen to you, and in the meantime, keep kicking ass."
- Florynce R. Kennedy, Color Me Flo
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"Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no
one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth."
- Mohandas K. Gandhi
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"Even if a man should chance to speak the most complete truth, yet he himself does not know it; all things are wrapped in
appearances."
- Xenophanes
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"The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself."
- Heraclitus
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"Things are seldom as they seem; skim milk masquerades as cream."
- W.S. Gilbert
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"You should never have your best trousers on when you turn out to fight for freedom and truth."
- Henrik Ibsen, An Enemy of the People, 1882
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"You can always get the truth from an American statesman after he has turned seventy, or given up all hope of the
Presidency."
- Wendell Phillips, speech, November 7, 1860
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"The first key to wisdom is this - constant and frequent questioning... by doubting we are led to question and by
questioning we arrive at the truth."
- Pierre Abelard, Sic et Non, ca. 1120
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"Doubt is the last vestibule which all must pass, before they can enter into the temple of truth."
- Charles Caleb Colton, Lacon, 1820-22
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"One's belief in truth begins with a doubt of all the truths one has believed hitherto."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 1878
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"Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who have found it."
- Andre Gide, So Be It, 1959
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"The dignity of truth is lost with much protesting."
- Ben Johnson, Catiline's Conspiracy, 1611
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"Difference of opinion leads to inquiry, and inquiry to truth."
- Thomas Jefferson, letter, March 13, 1815
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"What has not been examined impartially has not been well examined. Skepticism is therefore the first step toward truth."
- Denis Diderot,
Pensees Philosophiques, 1746
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"rough work, iconoclasm - but the only way to get at truth."
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., The Professor at the Breakfast-Table, 1860
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"If a historian were to relate truthfully all the crimes, weaknesses and disorders of mankind, his readers would take his
work for satire rather than for history."
- Pierre Bayle, Historical and Critical Dictionary, 1697
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"The truth is often a terrible weapon of aggression. It is possible to lie, and even to murder, with the truth."
- Alfred Adler, Problems of Neurosis, 1929
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"For mankind to hate truth as it may bring their evil deeds to light and punishment, is very easy and common; but to hate truth as truth, or God as God, which is the
same as to hate goodness for its own sake, unconnected with any other consequences, is impossible even to a (premised) diabolical nature."
- Ethan Allen, Reason the Only Oracle of Man 1784
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"Man defends himself as much as he can against truth, as a child does against a medicine, as the man of the Platonic cave
does against the light. He does not willingly follow his path, he has to be dragged along backward. This natural liking
for the false has several causes: the inheritance of prejudices, which produces an unconscious habit, a slavery; the
predominance of the imagination over the reason, which affects the understanding; the predominance of the passions over
the conscience, which depraves the heart; the predominance of the will over the intelligence, which vitiates the
character. A lively, disinterested, persistent liking for truth is extrodinarily rare. Action and faith enslave thought,
both of them in order not to be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism and doubt."
- Henri Frederic Amiel, The Private Journal of Henri Frederic Amiel
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"An error is the more dangerous in proportion to the degree of truth which it contains."
- Henri Frederic Amiel, The Private Journal of Henri Frederic Amiel December 26, 1852
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"What governs men is the fear of the truth."
- Henri Frederic Amiel, The Private Journal of Henri Frederic Amiel March 1, 1869
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"The language of truth is unadorned and always simple."
- Marcellinus Ammianus, (4th Century, C.E.)
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"Truth and news are not the same thing."
– Katharine Graham, owner of The Washington Post
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"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence."
– Henri Frederic Amiel
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"When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly
preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic."
– Dresden James
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"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or
pretended, from abroad."
– James Madison
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