“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
Truth is simple in theory and messy in practice. These quotes tackle honesty, deception, self-awareness, and the uncomfortable reality that the truths most worth hearing are usually the ones you least want to hear.
“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.”
“If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.”
“For truth is precious and divine, too rich a pearl for carnal swine.”
“A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies.”
“It does not require many words to speak the truth.”
“In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.”
“My truth - what I believe - is that there are no answers here and, if you are looking for answers, you'd better choose the question carefully.”
“What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?”
“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.”
“The truth is that many people set rules to keep from making decisions.”
“Let a man get up and say, Behold, this is the truth, and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say.”
“Every man has a right to utter what he thinks truth, and every other man has a right to knock him down for it. Martyrdom is the test.”
“I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.”
“Confidence and superiority: It's the usual fundamentalist stuff: I've got the truth, and you haven't.”
“There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
“I know what I like in other actors: truth. That's the best. It makes you say, 'OK, I'll go with you on this.'”