Philosophy on truth

“There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.”

“Truth springs from argument amongst friends.”

“No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.”

“One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.”

“Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.”

“The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.”

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

“Nature flies from the infinite, for the infinite is unending or imperfect, and Nature ever seeks an end.”

“I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.”

“Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.”

“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”

“No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.”

“Faith is the best wealth for a man in this world. Righteousness when well practised brings happiness. Truth is the sweetest of flavours. They say the life of one living by wisdom is the best.”

“If you have doubt about suffering and the other Four Truths, you may quickly ask about them now. Do not harbor doubts and fail to clear them up.”

“The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.”

“It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.”

“Variation: To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.”

“The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.”

“The superior man, even when he is not moving, has a feeling of reverence, and while he speaks not, he has the feeling of truthfulness.”

“That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.”

“I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain”

“Here the ways of men part: if you wish to strive for peace of soul and pleasure, then believe; if you wish to be a devotee of truth, then inquire.”

“Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.”

“May I really say it! All truths are bloody truths to me—take a look at my previous writings.”

“This is the antinomy: Insofar as we believe in morality we pass sentence on existence.”

“Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, / What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town, / If juster battles are enacted now / Between the ants upon this hummock's crown?”

“Truth, Goodness, Beauty — those celestial thrins, / Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, / With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, / Its joy confesses at their recent birth.”

“The progress from an absolute to a limited monarchy, from a limited monarchy to a democracy, is a progress toward a true respect for the individual.”

“Αll things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things (fr. 22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. The sun will not exceed his measures (fr. 29).”

“The wish to talk to God is absurd. We cannot talk to one we cannot comprehend — and we cannot comprehend God; we can only believe in Him. The uses of prayer are thus only subjective.”

“There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.”

“She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.”

“Monsieur ... I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.”

“As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.”

“Priestley was the first (unless it was Beccaria) who taught my lips to pronounce this sacred truth — that the greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation.”

“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.”

“The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.”

“Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.”

“For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.”

“One often makes a remark and only later sees how true it is.”

“It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.”

“It is quite impossible for a proposition to state that it itself is true. (4.442)”

“A tautology's truth is certain, a proposition's possible, a contradiction's impossible. (Certain, possible, impossible: here we have the first indication of the scale that we need in the theory of probability.) (4.464)”

“Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition is a truth-function of itself.) (5)”

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

“What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.”

“Always believe in your dreams, because if you don't, you'll still have hope.”

“Whatever happens at all happens as it should; you will find this true, if you watch narrowly.”

“Doth perfect beauty stand in need of praise at all? Nay; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than loving kindness, nor than modesty.”

“Zeno: The many do not know that except by this devious passage through all things the mind cannot attain to the truth.”

“Everywhere I am folded, there I am a lie.”

“If only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful.”

“The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.”

“The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.”

“The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.”

“In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.”

“Anyone who holds a true opinion without understanding is like a blind man on the right road.”

“Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent — then shall the rest be added unto you.”

“The Sophist demonstrates that everything is true and nothing is true.”

“For such Truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.”

“Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.”

“Optimism, said Cacambo, What is that? Alas! replied Candide, It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!”

“A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity”