79 Truth Quotes To Inspire

In a world often clouded by misinformation and uncertainty, the search for truth becomes an essential journey. Truth has the power to illuminate, transform, and inspire, guiding us toward authenticity and deeper understanding. Our carefully curated selection of the top 79 truth quotes aims to provide you with wisdom and clarity, whether you're seeking motivation, introspection, or a reminder of the unwavering strength of honesty. Dive into these profound quotes and let them enlighten your path to living a more truthful and inspired life.

1. “I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being, first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” - Malcolm X

2. “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” - Carl Sagan

3. “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.” - Mark Twain

4. “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.” - George Bernard Shaw

5. “Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.” - T.S. Eliot

6. “...when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.” - Richard Dawkins

7. “I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort.From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am.We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know.” - Socrates

8. “Her last conscious thought was disgust at life; her senses had lied to her. The world was not made of energy and delight but of foulness, betrayal, and lassitude. Living was hateful, and death was no better, and from end to end of the universe this was the first and last and only truth.” - Philip Pullman

9. “They were all fitting into place, the jig-saw pieces. The odd strained shapes that I had tried to piece together with my fumbling fingers and they had never fitted. Frank's odd manner when I spoke about Rebecca. Beatrice and her rather diffident negative attitude. The silence that I had always taken for sympathy and regret was a silence born of shame and embarrassment. It seemed incredible to me now that I had never understood. I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great wall in front of them that hid the truth. This was what I had done. I had built up false pictures in my mind and sat before them. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness Maxim would have told these things four months, five months ago.” - Daphne du Maurier

10. “I am a lover of truth, a worshiper of freedom, a celebrant at the altar of language and purity and tolerance.” - Stephen Fry

11. “If I'd written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people - including me - would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.” - Hunter S. Thompson

12. “Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

13. “The truth is seldom welcome, especially at dinner.” - Margaret Atwood

14. “The color of truth is grey.” - Andre Gide

15. “When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth.” - George Bernard Shaw

16. “A novel must show how the world truly is, how characters genuinely think, how events actually occur. A novel should somehow reveal the true source of our actions.” - Kevin Hood

17. “Even today, I've no idea what the truth is, or what I did with it.” - Luis Buñuel

18. “The Christian religion is a very powerful and convincing mistake.” - Philip Pullman

19. “Nothing factual that I write or say will be as truthful as my fiction.” - Nadine Gordimer

20. “Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.” - E. L. Doctorow

21. “Progress just means bad things happen faster.” - Terry Pratchett

22. “How you approach birth is intimately connected with how you approach life” - William Sears

23. “Pender laughed. "Verify? In this day and age? Who cares about verifying anything? It's all about the speed. Who gets there first defines the truth. You know that as well as any man living.” - David Baldacci

24. “The truth is, immigrants tend to be more American than people born here.” - Chuck Palahniuk

25. “Books do pretend ...but squeezed in between is even more that is true—without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?” - Matthew Pearl

26. “She realized all at once that Doon, thin, dark eyed Doon, with his troublesome temper and his terrible brown jacket, and his good heart---- was the person she knew better than anyone now. He was her best friend.--City of Ember--” - Jeanne DuPrau

27. “The things that make you a functional citizen in society - manners, discretion, cordiality - don't necessarily make you a good writer. Writing needs raw truth, wants your suffering and darkness on the table, revels in a cutting mind that takes no prisoners...” - Natalie Goldberg

28. “When I was ten years old, one of my friends brought a Shaleenian kangaroo-cat to school one day. I remember the way it hopped around with quick, nervous leaps, peering at everything with its large, almost circular golden eyes. One of the girls asked if it was a boy cat or a girl cat. Our instructor didn't know; neither did the boy who had brought it; but the teacher made the mistake of asking, 'How can we find out?' Someone piped up, 'We can vote on it!' The rest of the class chimed in with instant agreement and before I could voice my objection that some things can't be voted on, the election was held. It was decided that the Shaleenian kangaroo-cat was a boy, and forthwith, it was named Davy Crockett. Three months later, Davy Crockett had kittens. So much for democracy. It seems to me that if the electoral process can be so wrong about such a simple thing, isn't it possible for it to be very, very wrong on much more complex matters? We have this sacred cow in our society that what the majority of people want is right—but is it? Our populace can't really be informed, not the majority of them—most people vote the way they have been manipulated and by the way they have responded to that manipulation—they are working out their own patterns of wishful thinking on the social environment in which they live. It is most disturbing to me to realize that though a majority may choose a specific course of action or direction for itself, through the workings of a 'representative government,' they may be as mistaken about the correctness of such a choice as my classmates were about the sex of that Shaleenian kangaroo-cat. I'm not so sure than an electoral government is necessarily the best.” - David Gerrold

29. “Without balance, a life is no longer worth the effort.” - Olen Steinhauer

30. “You govern people, you do good and bad things.If you don't have guts to do bad, then step aside.” - Toba Beta

31. “Worship your body, beauty, and sexual allure and you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you.” - David Foster Wallace

32. “Truth is something believed in heart.Fact is anything happened in realities.” - Toba Beta

33. “Those sweet lips. My, oh my, I could kiss those lips all night long.Good things come to those who wait.” - Jess C. Scott

34. “Laws of nature have no physical properties of mass /energy. They are platonic truths in transcendent realm that create & govern the Universe.” - Deepak Chopra

35. “I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

36. “Truth, says instrumentalism, is what works out, that which does what you expect it to do. The judgment is true when you can "bank" on it and not be disappointed. If, when you predict, or when you follow the lead of your idea or plan, it brings you to the ends sought for in the beginning, your judgment is true. It does not consist in agreement of ideas, or the agreement of ideas with an outside reality; neither is it an eternal something which always is, but it is a name given to ways of thinking which get the thinker where he started. As a railroad ticket is a "true" one when it lands the passenger at the station he sought, so is an idea "true," not when it agrees with something outside, but when it gets the thinker successfully to the end of his intellectual journey. Truth, reality, ideas and judgments are not things that stand out eternally "there," whether in the skies above or in the earth beneath; but they are names used to characterize certain vital stages in a process which is ever going on, the process of creation, of evolution. In that process we may speak of reality, this being valuable for our purposes; again, we may speak of truth; later, of ideas; and still again, of judgments; but because we talk about them we should not delude ourselves into thinking we can handle them as something eternally existing as we handle a specimen under the glass. Such a conception of truth and reality, the instrumentalist believes, is in harmony with the general nature of progress. He fails to see how progress, genuine creation, can occur on any other theory on theories of finality, fixity, and authority; but he believes that the idea of creation which we have sketched here gives man a vote in the affairs of the universe, renders him a citizen of the world to aid in the creation of valuable objects in the nature of institutions and principles, encourages him to attempt things "unattempted yet in prose or rhyme," inspires him to the creation of "more stately mansions," and to the forsaking of his "low vaulted past." He believes that the days of authority are over, whether in religion, in rulership, in science, or in philosophy; and he offers this dynamic universe as a challenge to the volition and intelligence of man, a universe to be won or lost at man’s option, a universe not to fall down before and worship as the slave before his master, the subject before his king, the scientist before his principle, the philosopher before his system, but a universe to be controlled, directed, and recreated by man’s intelligence.” - Holly Estil Cunningham

37. “When you think you're right, you're most likely wrong.” - Jodi Picoult

38. “I wondered if emotions were like menstrual cycles, if you get enough women together. Give it time, and everyone was crying.” - Sarah Dessen

39. “Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people. This is true in political situations. The quality and depth of the politics evolving from a group depends in large part on their understanding of honor. Much of what is narrowly termed "politics" seems to rest on a longing for certainty even at the cost of honesty, for an analysis which, once given, need not be re-examined…It isn't that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you. It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.” - Adrienne Rich

40. “I never lie," I said offhand. "At least not to those I don't love.” - Anne Rice

41. “Šausmīgi daudz taisnību. Nojukt var, ja nav savējās.” - Imants Ziedonis

42. “...no woman can love a weak man hard enough to make him strong.” - Pearl Cleage

43. “I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth.” - Anonymous

44. “The fact is that nothing is more difficult to believe than the truth; conversely, nothing seduces like the power of lies, the greater the better. It's only natural, and you will have to find the right balance. Having said that, let me add that this particular old woman hasn't been collecting only years; she has also collected stories, and none sadder or more terrible than the one she's about to tell you. You have been at the heart of this story without knowing it until today ...” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

45. “A lie, as you probably know, has a taste all its own. Blocky and bitter and never quite right, like when you pop a piece of fancy chocolate into your mouth expecting toffee filling and you get lemon zest instead.” - Jodi Picoult

46. “I wondered how many people there were in the world who suffered, and continued to suffer, because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth.” - Daphne du Maurier

47. “I don't know what sort of world she will live in and I have no fixed opinions concerning how she should live in it. I only know that if she does not come to value what is true above what is useful, it will make little difference whether she lives at all.” - Cormac McCarthy

48. “An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

49. “Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.” - Blaise Pascal

50. “And by the way, if I always tell you the truth, you might start to believe me.” - Victor L. Wooten

51. “Consequently, the truth of God lives in our souls more by the power of superior moral courage than by the light of an eminent intelligence. Indeed, spiritual intelligence itself depends on the fortitude and patience with which we sacrifice ourselves for the truth, as it is communicated to our lives concretely in the providential will of God” - Thomas Merton

52. “Standing for truth is everything. Truth is power. Don't ever forget that.” - Terry Goodkind

53. “I create lies for people in order for them to find something true about themselves. I teach people that lies are doors that opens up to truth. Either you accept the lie, or you run away from it, thus, eliminating the meaning behind it, and what is could have accomplished.” - Lionel Suggs

54. “Thus we use our supposed "knowledge" of others to speak on their behalf, and condemn them for their words we ourselves put in their silent mouths.” - Margaret George

55. “Perhaps we have been guilty of some terminological inexactitudes.” - Winston S. Churchill

56. “For this wire is as a part of our body, as a vein torn from us, glowing with our blood. Are we proud of this thread of metal, or of our hands which made it, or is there a line to divide these two?” - Ayn Rand

57. “When all else is lost and gone forever, there is yearning. Only desire trumps time.” - Charles Frazier

58. “This was the first time I thought of S— that day. Her music was beautiful, her voice was beautiful, her body was beautiful. Even the dirty little pads of her feet were beautiful. I cursed myself then. For once, heaven had sent me Beauty in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down. How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?” - Roman Payne

59. “Why do you give way to your ego and pride. Where does it stand in the ocean of time.” - Naveen Rajeev

60. “For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro, not even the idiot, who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements; and to explain so complex a man as Harry by the artless division into wolf and man is a hopelessly childish attempt. Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two. His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands.” - Hermann Hesse

61. “The mother-women seemed to prevail that summer at Grand Isle. It was easy to know them, fluttering about with extended, protecting wings when any harm, real or imaginary, threatened their precious brood. They were women who idolized their children, worshiped their husbands, and esteemed it a holy privilege to efface themselves as individuals and grow wings as ministering angels.” - Kate Chopin

62. “Everything in life is speaking in spite of its apparent silence.” - Hazrat Inayat Khan

63. “The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.” - Chuck Klosterman

64. “Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.” - Alan H. Guth

65. “That's what we do: tell made-up stories to fend off the night, to put off telling the truth.” - Bernie Mcgill

66. “...the three things I cannot change are the past, the truth, and you.” - Anne Lamott

67. “Moses needed to learn that God was Jehovah-tsidkenu—the One who is righteous and the source of true acceptance. The staff was symbolic of Moses’ life. God was asking him to let go of it—to give complete control to him. When Moses picked it up, it was no longer his life but the very life of God…Just like Moses, until we yield control of our lives to Jesus Christ, it is impossible to see ourselves through God’s eyes. Try as we may, we will never see our worth through accomplishments or the opinions of others. (from Under His Wings: Healing Truth for Adoptees of All Ages)” - Beth Willis Miller

68. “It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth-one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.” - Michael Perry

69. “Her religious poetry was surprisingly slender, and as I was eager to know more about her religion, I asked her about this aspect of her poetry. She replied with these lines from Keats' Ode to a Grecian Urn: 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all Ye know on eath, and all ye need to know'. Do not ask me to immortalise the great Mystery of Life. I am just a humble worker. For beauty, look to the Pslams, to Isaiah, to St. John of the Cross. How could my poor pen scan such verse? For truth, look to the Gospels-- four short accounts of God made Man. There is nothing more to say.” - Jennifer Worth

70. “Your insecurity is when you compare your polaroid with someone else's glamour shot.” - Brian Hooten

71. “Fables should be taught as fables, myths as myths, and miracles as poetic fancies. To teach superstitions as truths is a most terrible thing. The child mind accepts and believes them, and only through great pain and perhaps tragedy can he be in after years relieved of them. In fact, men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth — often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.” - Hypathia of Alexandria

72. “Those who get into the business of truth are seldom satisfied. For truth is organic and destined for change.” - Keela Sanders

73. “It was not sympathy in the ordinary sense which he [Adolf Hitler] felt for the disinherited. That would not have been sufficient. He not only suffered with them, he lived for them and devoted all his thoughts to the salvation of those people from distress and poverty... his noble and grandiose work, which was intended 'for everybody'...” - August Kubizek

74. “The concept of divine revelation was central to Augustine's epistemology, or theory of knowledge. The metaphor of light is instructive. In our present earthly state we are equipped with the faculty of sight. We have eyes, optic nerves, and so forth- all the equipment needed for sight. But a man with the keenest eyesight can see nothing if he is locked in a totally dark room. So just as an external source of light is needed for seeing, so an external revelation from God is needed for knowing. When Augustine speaks of revelation, he is not speaking of Biblical revelation alone. He is also concerned with "general" or "natural" revelation. Not only are the truths in Scripture dependent on God's revelation, but all truth, including scientific truth, is dependent on divine revelation. This is why Augustine encouraged students to learn as much as possible about as many things as possible. For him, all truth is God's truth, and when one encounters truth, one encounters the God whose truth it is.” - R.C. Sproul

75. “If you are after truth, let your shadow be the only shadow around you! Stay away from the crowds!” - Mehmet Murat ildan

76. “Anyway, I don’t want anyone else, I just want Vaughn.’ It was good to finally say it, as if Grace said it out loud then maybe the universe would get the message and send him back to her.” - Sarra Manning

77. “Sometimes you have to know what you're willing to sacrifice to be the person you are meant to be.” - Erik Tomblin

78. “The worst thing to call somebody is crazy, it's dismissive. 'But I don't understand this person', so they're crazy. That's bullshit cause people are not crazy, they strong people, maybe their environment is a little sick.” - Dave Chapelle

79. “Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.” - Idries Shah