212 Quotes About Truth

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently.

Attitudes are more important than facts.

A sacred regard to the authority of God ought to lead us to reject an error, however old, sanctioned by whatever authority, or however generally practiced.

Without absolutes revealed from without by God Himself, we are left rudderless in a sea of conflicting ideas about manners, justice and right and wrong, issuing from a multitude of self-opinionated thinkers.

You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

In passing, we should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.

Error is always more busy than truth.

A judicious silence is always better than truth spoken without charity.

Genuine spiritual knowledge lies not in wonderful and mysterious thoughts but in actual spiritual experience through union of the believer's life with truth.

An open mind, in questions that are not ultimate, is useful. But an open mind about the ultimate foundations either of Theoretical or of Practical Reason is idiocy.

Just because someone is sincere in his conviction does not mean that it is true. It is possible to be sincerely wrong.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Do not be influenced by the importance of the writer, and whether his learning be great or small, but let the love of pure truth draw you to read. Do not inquire, Who said this? but pay attention to what is said.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Oath-taking is really a pathetic confession of our own dishonesty. What do we find it necessary to introduce our promises by some tremendous formula? The only reason is that we know our simple word is not likely to be trusted. So we try to induce people to believe us by adding a solemn oath.

Withhold no part of the precious truth, but speak what you know and declare what you have seen. Do not allow the toil or darkness or possible unbelief of your friends to dissuade you. Let us rise and march to the place of duty, and there declare what great things God has shown to our soul.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

Truth can't be judged on the basis of popularity.

Truth offends everyone outside its definitions. But the irony of truth is that the greater its potential for offense, the greater its potential for giving hope.

God's truth judges created things out of love, and Satan's truth judges them out of envy and hatred.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

To go to law is for two persons to kindle a fire, at their own cost, to warm others and singe themselves to cinders; and because they cannot agree as to what is truth and equity, they will both agree to unplume themselves that others may be decorated with their feathers.

The believer in addition should assail the lies of the evil spirits. Every suggestion from the enemy must be met resolutely with the truth of the Bible. Answer doubts with the texts of faith; respond to despair with words of hope; reply to fear with words of peace. If he does not know the appropriate verse, let him pray for direction. Victory is obtained by wielding the Sword of the Spirit.

As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth.

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.

I perceived how that it was impossible to establish the lay people in any truth except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue.

Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them then we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, more hospitable to receive it, more loyal to follow it wherever it leads.

Human salvation demands the divine disclosure of truths surpassing reason.

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

If nothing is self-evident, nothing can be proved. Similarly if nothing is obligatory for its own sake, nothing is obligatory at all.

We must stress that the basis for our faith is neither experience nor emotion but the truth as God has given it in verbalized, prepositional form in the Scripture and which we first of all apprehend with our minds.

Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.

The great unity which true science seeks is found only by beginning with our knowledge of God, and coming down from Him along the stream of causation to every fact and event that affects us.

Do we have any records from first-century 'journalists' who interviewed eyewitnesses, asked tough questions, and faithfully recorded what they scrupulously determined to be true?

Be calm in arguing; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy.

It matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth.

Truth and love are two of the most powerful things in the world; and when they both go together they cannot easily be withstood.

We are either in the process of resisting God's truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth.

Most marvelous and enviable is that fecundity of fancy which can adorn whatever it touches, which can invest naked fact and dry reasoning with unlooked for beauty, make flowers bloom even on the brow of the precipice, and turn even the rock itself into moss and lichens. This faculty is most important for the vivid and attractive exhibition of truth to the minds of men.

Unless you have a rock-solid commitment to truth, the Bible won't change your life - it will only be so many words in a sea of words.

All that is true, by whomsoever it has been said has its origin in the Spirit.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentional lying, that there is so much falsehood in the world.

A charitable untruth, an uncharitable truth, and an unwise management of truth or love, are all to be carefully avoided of him that would go with a right foot in the narrow way.

God deceiveth thee not.

Truth is mighty and will prevail.

When thou art obliged to speak, be sure to speak the truth; for equivocation is half-way to lying, and lying is the whole way to hell.

Some persons believe everything that their kindred, their parents, and their tutors believe. The veneration and the love which they have for their ancestors incline them to swallow down all their opinions at once, without examining what truth or falsehood there is in them. Men take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.

Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression; and there are vague ways of speaking that are truer than strict facts would be. When the Psalmist said, "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because men keep not thy law," he did not state the fact, but he stated a truth deeper than fact, and truer.

No doubt those who really founded modern science were usually those whose love of truth exceeded their love of power.

There are joys which long to be ours. God sends ten thousands truths, which come about us like birds seeking inlet; but we are shut up to them, and so they bring us nothing, but sit and sing awhile upon the roof, and then fly away.

I believe that in the end the truth will conquer.

Your words can enlighten a mind that is darkened.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

How pitiful that his mind was overruled by his emotion; his reasoning, overcome by his affection. Why is it that men "did not believe the truth?" Because they "had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thess. 2:12). It is not that the truth is unreasonable but that it is not loved. Hence when one truly turns to the Lord he "believes with his heart (not mind) and so is justified" (Rom. 10:10).

The Spirit breathes upon the Word and brings the truth to sight.

Truth with self-denial is a better pennyworth, than error with all its flesh-pleasing.

No, the Christian must stand fixed to his principles, and not change his habit; but freely show what countryman he is by his holy constancy in the truth.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

We do not truly see light, we only see slower things lit by it, so that for us light is on the edge--the last thing we know before things become too swift for us.'

He who loves will rejoice in the Truth, rejoice not in what he has been taught to believe; not in this Church's doctrine or in that; not in this issue, or in that issue; but "in the Truth." He will accept only what is real; he will strive to get at facts; he will search for Truth with a humble and unbiased mind, and cherish whatever he finds at any sacrifice.

We are obliged, therefore, to say that whoever speaks that which is foreign to religion is using many words, while he who speaks the words of truth, even should he go over the whole field and omit nothing, is always speaking the one word.

The truth of God may well be likened to a narrow path skirted on either side by a dangerous and destructive precipice: in other words, it lies between two gulfs of error.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

A wisely chosen illustration is almost essential to fasten the truth upon the ordinary mind, and no teacher can afford to neglect this part of his preparation.

Get the facts, or the facts will get you. And when you get em, get em right, or they will get you wrong.

To maintain pure truth in the church, we should be ready to make any sacrifice, to hazard peace, to risk dissention and run the chance of division.

If the mind is open the individual will soon perceive the preciousness of a truth which initially appeared rather dull to him but now is illumined by the spirit's light.

I'd rather be right wrongly than wrong rightly.

Whoever is afraid of submitting any question, civil or religious, to the test of free discussion, is more in love with his own opinion than with truth.

I have found it helpful to begin my day by systematically reading the Bible and giving God the opportunity to direct my attention to certain truths. These truths become the springboard to begin speaking to the Lord.

If you hold the truth while you are in danger, the truth will hold you when you are in danger.

Never let us be guilty of sacrificing any portion of truth on the altar of peace.

Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.

Do the truth ye know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.

For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it.

There is no strength in unbelief. Even the unbelief of what is false is no source of might. It is the truth shining from behind that gives the strength to disbelieve.

Christ is the key which unlocks the golden doors into the temple of Divine truth.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

From the death of the old the new proceeds, and the life of truth from the death of creeds.

All that is glorious is but a phase of His infinite excellence, and so all truth and holiness, found in the Holy Scripture, are only a new tribute to Him who is the Truth, the Holy One of God.

The laws of thought are also the laws of things: of things in the remotest space and the remotest time.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

God speaks to man through the Scriptures, and He does not reveal normative truth except as it is already revealed in the Scriptures themselves. The test of truth must remain not what man experiences today but what the Scriptures have stated long ago.

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.

The truth only irritates those it enlightens, but does not convert.

Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Only as they cease to seek anything by themselves and only as they take the position of the teachable shall they be taught by the Spirit truth which they are able to digest.

What we call wisdom is the result of all the wisdom of past ages. Our best institutions are like young trees growing upon the roots of the old trunks that have crumbled away.

He who abandons the personal search for truth, under whatever pretext, abandons truth. The very word truth, by becoming the limited possession of a guild, ceases to have any meaning; and faith, which can only be founded on truth, gives way to credulity, resting on mere opinion.

As a matter of honor, one man owes it to another to manifest the truth.

We say, then, to anyone who is under trial, give Him time to steep the soul in His eternal truth. Go into the open air, look up into the depths of the sky, or out upon the wideness of the sea, or on the strength of the hills that is His also; or, if bound in the body, go forth in the spirit; spirit is not bound. Give Him time and, as surely as dawn follows night, there will break upon the heart a sense of certainty that cannot be shaken.

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.

Just because something is popular doesn't make it true or trustworthy.

The Christian apologist should be able to present God in his full attractiveness so that his rivals in the world are eclipsed.

Unless the religious claims of the Bible are again acknowledged, its literary claims will, I think, be given only 'mouth honour' and that decreasingly.

The true knowledge or science which exists nowhere but in the mind itself, has no other entity at all besides intelligibility; and therefore whatsoever is clearly intelligible, is absolutely true.

Truth is not what I say it is, and not what you think it is. Truth is what God's word says it is.

The problem is that relativism provides no sure foundation for a safe and orderly society.

We corrupt the Word of God most dangerously, when we throw any doubt on the plenary inspiration of any part of Holy Scripture.

An honest heart loves the Truth.

In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favour of the facts as they are.

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other.

Knowledge of facts is important. Knowledge of truth is essential. Yet our Lord's concern goes beyond mere head knowledge. He wants us not only to know the truth but also to obey the truth. He wants us to live the truth, practice the truth, and be conformed to and transformed by that truth.

If the way in which men express their thoughts is slipshod and mean, it will be very difficult for their thoughts themselves to escape being the same. If it is high flown and bombastic, a character for national simplicity and truthfulness cannot long be maintained.

Faith holds on to truth and reason from what it knows to be fact.

The deepest truths are the simplest and the most common.

It's not enough to rage against the lie...you've got to replace it with the truth.

Truth without enthusiasm, morality without emotion, ritual without soul, are things Christ unsparingly condemned. Destitute of fire, they are nothing more than a godless philosophy, an ethical system, and a superstition.

Truth alone will not preserve if there be not corresponding exercise as to living in its power, and being controlled thereby.

Saints not only desire to love and speak truth with their lips, but they seek to be true within; they will not lie even in the closet of their hearts, for God is there to listen; they scorn double meanings, evasions, equivocations, white lies, flatteries, and deceptions.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

All that is glorious is but a phase of His infinite excellence, and so all truth and holiness, found in the Holy Scripture, are only a new tribute to Him who is the Truth, the Holy One of God.

The child of God must be willing to know all the truth concerning himself. This requires humility and sincerity.

If a man preaches free will how pleased men will be; but if he preaches free grace how offended they are. It is the truth which gives offence.

Temples have their images; and we see what influence they have always had over a great part of mankind. But, in truth, the ideas and images in men's minds are the invisible powers that constantly govern them; and to these they all pay universally a ready submission.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth, you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

One encounters no difficulty in accepting that truth which is agreeable; but it is not easy at all to take in a truth which blasts one's ego.

Great truths that are stumbling blocks to the natural man are nevertheless the very foundations upon which the confidence of the spiritual man is built.

Give yourself to prayer, to reading and meditation on divine truths: strive to penetrate to the bottom of them and never be content with a superficial knowledge.

Unless we discover actual truth, morality is up for grabs.

Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth; he was truth; truth, through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.

A friend who attended a prestigious MBA program once told me about the business ethics course he took there. The professor counseled honest business practices for two reasons. First, if you lie or cheat you may be caught, and that would be bad for business. Second, if people in the company know they are working in an honest business, that will boost morale . . . 'Tell the truth--because it's to your own advantage,' was the counsel. What happens, however, when you inevitable come to situations in which telling the truth would cost you dearly? What happens when telling a particular lie would be stupendously advantageous to you?

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

Let things true be preferred to things false, things eternal to things momentary, things useful to things agreeable.

I am perfectly convinced that whatever the gospels are they are not legends. Christ bent down and scribbled in the dust with His finger. Nothing comes of this. No one has based any doctrine on it. And the act of inventing little irrelevant details to make an imaginary scene more convincing is purely a modern art.

Just when the truth about life sinks in, his truth starts to surface. He takes us by the hand and dares us not to sweep the facts under the rug but to confront them with him at our side.

Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person.

Men are apt to prefer a prosperous error to an afflicted truth.

Perhaps their speech does convey truth, but without the quickening of the Holy Spirit even truth is of small advantage.

It was a saying of the ancients, "Truth lies in a well;" and to carry on this metaphor, we may justly say that logic does supply us with steps, whereby we may go down to reach the water.

Doctrine is nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed.

God has special confidences for each soul. Indeed, it would seem as though the deepest truths came only in moments of profound devotional silence and contemplation.

Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does only harm. It destroys humble inquiry after truth, and throws all the energies into an attempt to prove ourselves right - a spirit in which no man gets at truth.

All extremes are error. The reverse of error is not truth, but error still. Truth lies between extremes.

For years, maybe, you have tried fruitlessly to exercise control over yourself, and perhaps this is still your experience; but when once you see the truth you will recognize that you are indeed powerless to do anything, but that in setting you aside altogether God has done it all. Such discovery brings human striving and self-effort to an end.

In the postmodern view that prevails today, there seems to be no objective truth or established law. Truth seems to be in the eyes of the beholder. Likewise, the words of the law and the United States Constitution mean only what new "empathetic" judges say.

In matters of truth the fact that you don't want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.

He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other.

Where, except in uncreated light, can the darkness be drowned?

There is but one kind of knowledge concerning either the Bible or God which is valuable, and that is the truth revealed to our spirit by God's Spirit. God does not explain Himself via man's reasoning; never does man come to know God through rationalization.

One of the comments that we've heard that has really blessed us is people have been driven back to the book of Revelation to prove us wrong only to find that what we said was there.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

Revelation does not mean man finding God, but God finding man, God sharing His secrets with us, God showing us Himself. In revelation, God is the agent as well as the object.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

There are no variations except for those who know a norm, and no subtleties for those who have not grasped the obvious.

Truth is the daughter of God.

When regard for truth has been broken down or even slightly weakened, all things will remain doubtful.

Seeing's believing, but feeling's the truth.

No one truth is rightly held till it is clearly conceived and stated, and no single truth is adequately comprehended till it is viewed in harmonious relations to all the other truths of the system of which Christ is the centre.

One never errs more safely than when one errs by too much loving the truth.

After reading the doctrines of Plato, Socrates, or Aristotle, we feel that the specific difference between their words and Christ's is the difference between an inquiry and a revelation.

My principal method for defeating error and heresy is, by establishing the truth. One purposes to fill a bushel with tears; but if I can fill it first with wheat, I may defy his attempts.

The first step toward finding God, Who is Truth, is to discover the truth about myself: and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Disputation carries away the mind from that calm and sedate temper which is so necessary to contemplate truth.

Raillery and wit were never made to answer our inquiries after truth, and to determine a question of rational controversy, though they may be sometimes serviceable to expose to contempt those inconsistent follies which have been first abundantly refuted by argument; they serve indeed only to cover nonsense with shame, when reason has first proved it to be mere nonsense.

We must make up our minds to be ignorant of much, if we would know anything.

The greatest friend of truth is time; her greatest enemy is prejudice, and her constant companion humility.

But hereof be assured, that all is not lawful nor just that is statute by civil laws; neither yet is everything sin before God, which ungodly persons allege to be treason.

We search the world for truth; we cull The good, the pure, the beautiful, From all old flower fields of the soul; And, weary seekers of the best, We come back laden from our quest, To find that all the sages said Is in the Book our mothers read.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.