Biography
"If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth"
"The national argument right now is, one, who's got the truth and, two, who's got the facts… Until we can manage to get the two of them back together again, we're not going to make much progress."
"Truth is strong enough to overcome all human sophistries."
"The truth which makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear."
"Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written."
"Time, beneath whose influence the pyramids moulder into dust, and the flinty rocks decay, does not and cannot destroy a fact, nor strip a truth of one portion of its essential importance."
"To say of what is, that it is, or of what is not, that it is not, is true."
"Why, then, does truth generate hatred, and why does thy servant who preaches the truth come to be an enemy to them who also love the happy life, which is nothing else than joy in the truth - unless it be that truth is loved in such a way that those who love something else besides her wish that to be the truth which they do love. Since they are unwilling to be deceived, they are unwilling to be convinced that they have been deceived. Therefore, they hate the truth for the sake of whatever it is that they love in place of the truth. They love truth when she shines on them; and hate her when she rebukes them."
"First of all, there is undoubtedly a Truth one and eternal which we are seeking, from which all other truth derives, by the light of which all other truth finds its right place, explanation and relation to the scheme of knowledge … Secondly, this Truth, though it is one and eternal, expresses itself in Time and through the mind of man; therefore every Scripture must necessarily contain two elements, one temporary, perishable, belonging to the ideas of the period and country in which it was produced, the other eternal and imperishable and applicable in all ages and countries."
"These bitter accusations might have been suppressed, had I, with greater policy, concealed my struggles, and flattered you into the belief of my being impelled by unqualified, unalloyed inclination; by reason, by reflection, by everything. But disguise of every sort is my abhorrence. Nor am I ashamed of the feelings I related. They were natural and just."
"Truth means that which actually is, as opposed to lies, incorrect beliefs, fantasies or foolishness, and exists independently of thinkers."
"Change in our views seems to be the only permanent phenomenon, and in no science has the maxim: "Much arises which has already perished, and what is now honored is already declining," attained such extended verification as in the very science of medicine. Even so in this same science has been proven the truth of that other saying: "As long at man struggles he errs". To err in its struggles after the truth is, however, according to the resigned expression of Lessing, the portion of humanity, and absolute truth is of God alone."
"You must be ever vigilant to discover the unifying Truth behind all the scintillating variety."
"The reasons for putting humanistic truth above scientific truth are not metaphysical but very practical: the discipline that helps man to self-mastery is found to have a more important bearing on his happiness than the discipline that helps him to a mastery of physical nature. If scientific discipline is not supplemented by a truly humanistic or religious discipline the result is unethical science, and unethical science is perhaps the worst monster that has yet been turned loose on the race. Man in spite of what I have termed his stupidity, his persistent evasion of the main issue, the issue of his own happiness, will awaken sooner or later to the fearful evil he has already suffered from a science that has arrogated to itself what does not properly belong to it; and then science may be as unduly depreciated as it has, for the past century or two, been unduly magnified; so that in the long run it is in the interest of science itself to keep in its proper place, which is below both humanism and religion."
"What is truth? said jesting Pilate, but would not stay for an answer."
"But no pleasure is comparable to standing upon the vantage ground of truth."
"There is no finality in the presentation of truth; it develops and grows to meet man's growing demand for light."
"Certain great concepts are firmly grasped by man. Certain great hopes are taking form and will become the pattern of man's living. Certain great speculations will become experimental theories, and later prove demonstrated facts... A great stirring and moving is going on."
"All right ideas are temporary in nature, and must eventually take their place as partial rights, and give place to the greater truth. The fact of the day is seen later as part of a greater fact. A man can have grasped some of the lesser principles of the Ageless Wisdom so clearly, and be so convinced of their correctness, that the bigger whole is forgotten and he builds a thought-form about the partial truth which he has seen, (and) which can prove a limitation and keep him a prisoner and hold him back from progress. He is so sure of his possession of the truth, that he can see the truth of no one else. He can be so convinced of the reality of his own embodied concept of what the truth may be, that he forgets his own brain limitations, and that the truth has come to him via his own soul, and is consequently coloured by his ray, being subsequently built into form by his personal separative mind. He lives but for that little truth; he can see no other; he forces his thought-form on other people; he becomes the obsessed fanatic and so mentally unbalanced, even if the world regards him as sane."
"You must never run away from the truth, Jake, however unpleasant. Because once you begin running, you can never stop."
"They speak falsely who say that truth is the daughter of time; it is the child of eternity, and as old as the Divine mind. The perception of it takes place in the order of time; truth itself knows nothing of the succession of ages."
"The progress of man consists in this, that he himself arrives at the perception of truth."
"Yes, there is a Divinity, one from which we must never turn aside for the guidance of our huge inward life and of the share we have as well in the life of all men. It is called the truth."
"It would have been a terrible thing to die a fool and a liar. Truth, at any cost, is worth the price."
"Truth could not be spawned in lies and deceit."