Collection Of Powerful Truth Quotes To Inspire And Reflect

“Truth” refers to the state or quality of being by fact or reality. It is an absolute and accurate representation of events, situations, or information as they are. Truth is often seen as an objective and verifiable reality that stands independently of personal opinions, beliefs, or interpretations. In various contexts, “truth” can be used to describe sincerity, honesty, or a genuine state of affairs. Philosophically, truth is a subject of inquiry and debate, with different perspectives on what constitutes truth and how it can be discovered or understood. The pursuit of truth is a fundamental aspect of human inquiry, knowledge, and ethical conduct. People often value truth as a guiding principle in areas such as science, journalism, philosophy, and interpersonal relationships. Seeking and acknowledging the truth is considered a virtue in many ethical and moral frameworks.

Truth Quotes

1. “Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

2. “It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.”
— Henry David Thoreau

3. “We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

4. “Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief, or ignorance.”
— W. Clement Stone

5. “Wisdom is found only in truth.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

6. “Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
— Leo Tolstoy

7. “All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
— George Bernard Shaw

8. “The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”
— Aristotle

9. “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.”
— Winston Churchill

10. “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
— Thomas Jefferson

11. “The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.”
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

12. “The truth that is suppressed by friends is the readiest weapon of the enemy.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

13. “The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”
— Bertrand Russell

14. “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
— Marcus Aurelius

15. “An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

16. “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

17. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky

18. “When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone who seeks the truth.”
— Rumi

19. “It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”
— Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

20. “Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both before we commit ourselves to either.”
— Aesop

21. “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell

22. “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
— Thomas Sowell

23. “Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
— Confucius

24. “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
— Soren Kierkegaard

25. “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

26. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
— Marcus Aurelius

27. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
— Winston Churchill

28. “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.”
— William Faulkner

29. “The ability to ask questions is the greatest resource in learning the truth.”
— Carl Jung

30. “Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.”
— Walter Darby Bannard

31. “The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.”
— Ann Landers

32. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
— Charles Spurgeon

33. “Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.”
— Jorge Luis Borges

34. “The truth will set you free, but first, it will make you miserable.”
— James A. Garfield

35. “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

36. “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
— Abraham Lincoln

37. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
— Galileo Galilei

38. “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
— Spencer Johnson

39. “Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
— Albert Einstein

40. “Truth exists; only lies are invented.”
— Georges Braque

41. “Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
— Warren W. Wiersbe

42. “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

43. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
— Mark Twain

44. “Never apologize for showing feelings. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

45. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
— Plato

46. “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
— George Orwell

47. “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”
— Thomas Sowell

48. “Three things cannot long be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
— Confucius

49. “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
— Soren Kierkegaard

50. “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer

51. “Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.”
— Marcus Aurelius

52. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”
— Winston Churchill

53. “Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world…would do this, it would change the earth.”
— William Faulkner

54. “The ability to ask questions is the greatest resource in learning the truth.”
— Carl Jung

55. “Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.”
— Walter Darby Bannard

56. “The naked truth is always better than the best-dressed lie.”
— Ann Landers

57. “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
— Charles Spurgeon

58. “Truth never penetrates an unwilling mind.”
— Jorge Luis Borges

59. “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
— James A. Garfield

60. “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

61. “I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.”
— Abraham Lincoln

62. “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.”
— Galileo Galilei

63. “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
— Spencer Johnson

64. “Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”
— Albert Einstein

65. “Truth exists; only lies are invented.”
— Georges Braque

66. “Truth without love is brutality and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
— Warren W. Wiersbe

67. “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
— Martin Luther King, Jr.

68. “If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
— Mark Twain

69. “Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

70. “False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.”
— Plato

71. “If the road is easy, you’re likely going the wrong way.”
— Terry Goodkind

72. “People say they love truth, but in reality they want to believe that which they love is true.”
— Robert Ringer

73. “I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.”
— Hunter S. Thompson

74. “There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
— Maya Angelou

75. “When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.”
— Anais Nin

76. “Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.”
— Bob Marley

77. “Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.”
— Elizabeth Cady Stanton

78. “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.”
— Billy Wilder

79. “Truth is so rare that it is delightful to tell it.”
— Emily Dickinson

80. “The idea that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of those pleasant falsehoods, which most experience refutes. History is teeming with instances of truth put down by persecution. If not put down forever, it may be set back for centuries.”
— John Stuart Mill

81. “The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.”
— J. K. Rowling

82. “Those who know the TRUTH are not equal to those who love it.”
— Confucius

83. “Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full in the evening.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

84. “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

85. “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
— Oscar Wilde

86. “The cruelest lies are often told in silence.”
— Robert Louis Stevenson

87. “Long years must pass before the truths we have made for ourselves become our very flesh.”
— Paul Valery

88. “Pure truth, like pure gold, has been found unfit for circulation because men have discovered that it is far more convenient to adulterate the truth than to refine themselves.”
— Charles Caleb Colton

89. “A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free, peaceful man.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti

90. “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

91. “I want everyone to tell me the truth, even if it costs him his job.”
— Samuel Goldwyn

92. “We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.”
— Carl Jung

93. “Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

94. “Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’”
— Khalil Gibran

95. “The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.”
— Herbert Agar

96. “Truth is what stands the test of experience.”
— Albert Einstein

97. “The highest compact we can make with our fellow is –
“Let there be truth between us two forevermore.””
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

98. “Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”
— Albert Einstein

99. “I never said it was possible. I only said it was true.”
— Charles Richet

100. “Strange times are these, in which we live, forsooth ;
When young and old are taught in Falsehood’s school:–
And the man who dares to tell the truth,
Is called at once a lunatic and fool.”
— George Francis Train

101. “Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.”
— Walt Whitman

102. “Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”
— Oscar Wilde

103. “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.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

104. “The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.”
— Nadine Gordimer

105. “The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. “One word of truth outweighs the world.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

106. “The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.”
— Aristotle

107. “Truth, when not sought after, rarely comes to light.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

108. “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.”
— Aristotle

109. “Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.”
— Mark Twain

110. “You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.”
— C. S. Lewis

111. “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

112. “Lies are the religion of slaves and masters. Truth is the god of the free man.”
— Maxim Gorky

113. “The truth is lived, not taught.”
— Hermann Hesse

114. “Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains taken to bring it to light.”
— George Washington

115. “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
— Oscar Wilde

116. “A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God’s truth is attacked and yet would remain silent.”
— John Calvin

117. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.”
— Oscar Wilde

118. “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
— Aldous Huxley

119. “Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a begging.”
— Martin Luther

120. “The passion for truth is silenced by answers which have the weight of undisputed authority.”
— Paul Tillich

121. “Things omitted are often more deadly than errors committed.”
— Leo Buscaglia

122. “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
— Winston Churchill

123. “Truth will rise above falsehood as oil above water.”
— Miguel de Cervantes

124. “We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”
— Denis Diderot

125. “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.”
— Henry David Thoreau

126. “Truth allows no choice.”
— Samuel Johnson

127. “Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time.”
— Benjamin Disraeli

128. “A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity.”
— Baltasar Gracian

129. “All people know the same truth. Our lives consist of how we choose to distort it.”
— Woody Allen

130. “Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.”
— Giordano Bruno

131. “You never find yourself until you face the truth.”
— Pearl Bailey

132. “It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti

133. “The greatest friend of truth is Time, her greatest enemy is Prejudice, and her constant companion is Humility.”
— Charles Caleb Colton

134. “Falsehoods not only disagree with truths but usually quarrel among themselves.”
— Daniel Webster

135. “You shall know the truth, and it will make you odd.”
— Flannery O’Connor

136. “Chase after the truth like all hell.”
— Clarence Darrow

137. “The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination… In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture.”
— Daniel Dennett

138. “Truth is a very different thing from fact; it is the loving contact of the soul with spiritual fact, vital and potent. It does not work in the soul independently of all faculty or qualifications there for setting it forth or defending it. Truth in the inward parts is a power, not an opinion.”
— George MacDonald

139. “Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
— William Penn

140. “What is needed, rather than running away or controlling or suppressing or any other resistance, is understanding fear; that means, watch it, learn about it, come directly into contact with it. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it.”
— Jiddu Krishnamurti

141. “As scarce as truth is, the supply has always been in excess of the demand.”
— Josh Billings

142. “As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them.”
— Kurt Vonnegut

143. “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.”
— James Russell Lowell

144. “Truth burns up error.”
— Sojourner Truth

145. “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”
— Noam Chomsky

146. “Not being known doesn’t stop the truth from being true.”
— Richard Bach

147. “For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.”
— Maya Angelou

148. “There is no truth. There is only perception.”
— Gustave Flaubert

149. “Beyond a doubt, truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.”
— Leonardo da Vinci

150. “Always tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember what you said.”
— Mark Twain

151. “Art remains the one way possible of speaking truth.”
— Robert Browning

152. “Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”
— Edward R. Murrow

153. “This above all; to thine own self be true.”
— William Shakespeare

154. “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”
— Robert W. Service

155. “In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.”
— Walter Cronkite

156. “Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.”
— Claude Adrien Helvetius

157. “Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.”
— Henri Frederic Amiel

158. “On the mountains of truth, you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

159. “Opinion is a flitting thing, But Truth outlasts the Sun.”
— Emily Dickinson

160. “If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.”
— Albert Einstein

161. “Truth exists, only falsehood has to be invented.”
— Georges Braque

162. “Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible but the mark of a fake messiah.”
— Richard Bach

163. “Whatever you say about something, it is not.”
— Alfred Korzybski

164. “There is no such source of error as the pursuit of truth.”
— Samuel Butler

165. “Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
— Mahatma Gandhi

166. “Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.”
— Albert Schweitzer

167. “Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; ere long she shall appear to vindicate thee.”
— Immanuel Kant

168. “If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.”
— Emile Zola

169. “For truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.”
— Lord Byron

170. “Truth is always served by great minds, even if they fight it.”
— Jean Rostand

171. “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.”
— John F. Kennedy

172. “No truth can be said to be seen as it is until it is seen in its relation to all other truths. In this relation only is it true.”
— Elizabeth Prentiss

173. “I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me.”
— Simone de Beauvoir

174. “Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects… totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations.”
— Aldous Huxley

175. “Truth uttered before its time is dangerous.”
— Mencius

176. “Sanity is not truth. Sanity is conformity to what is socially expected. Truth is sometimes in conformity, sometimes not.”
— Robert M. Pirsig

177. “Keep your facts, I’m going with the truth.”
— Stephen Colbert

178. “Tell the truth, and shame the devil.”
— Jonathan Swift

179. “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche

180. “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.”
— John Keats

181. “Approach each new problem not with a view of finding what you hope will be there, but to get the truth, the realities that must be grappled with. You may not like what you find. In that case, you are entitled to try to change it. But do not deceive yourself as to what you do find to be the facts of the situation.”
— Bernard Baruch

182. “When in doubt tell the truth.”
— Mark Twain

183. “The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and philosophers to pursue. In human relations, kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.”
— Graham Greene

184. “Truth should not be forced; it should simply manifest itself like a woman who has in her privacy reflected and coolly decided to bestow herself upon a certain man.”
— John Updike

185. “Fiction is the truth inside the lie.”
— Stephen King

186. “The truth was obscure, Too profound, and too pure, To live it you had to explode”
— Bob Dylan

187. “You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it.”
— Johnny Cash

188. “I cannot give any scientist of any age better advice than this: the intensity of a conviction that a hypothesis is true has no bearing over whether it is true or not.”
— Peter Medawar

189. “We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.”
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

190. “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

191. “The ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood.”
— Arthur Koestler

192. “There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.”
— Thomas Jefferson

193. “If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.”
— Emile Zola

194. “Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
— Mark Twain

195. “The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.”
— Georg C. Lichtenberg

196. “No man’s faith, no man’s religion, no religion in all the world can ever rise above the truth.”
— Gordon B. Hinckley

197. “For every beauty, there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth, there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love, there is a heart somewhere to receive it.”
— Ivan Panin

198. “To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

199. “I am entering into the truth, into nature.”
— Paul Gauguin

200. “Truth – An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.”
— Ambrose Bierce