Are you a seeker of truth? Is your mind vexed by the simple and yet all-encompassing nature of what truth is?
In today’s post will be providing you with some truth quotes that can, hopefully, help you in your quest for that which is underrated but most important.
If you want to learn about truth and expand your mind with some wise words from ancient and modern thinkers, read on.
Truth Quotes for The Seekers
What is the truth, exactly? The day we can define “The Truth” is the day that we’ve figured out all the mysteries of creation, whether that’s even possible or not, we don’t know – but the best we can do is try.
Truth can be many different things to many different people, for a scientist, truth is finding out a law of the universe (like gravity).
On a personal level, truth can be speaking honestly about what we generally think and feel about a situation (which depending on the context, can be both terrifying and liberating).
There are all kinds of philosophical arguments about the truth, but perhaps the most important thing is that you, as an individual value the truth and seek to find it in your own life.
Here are some concepts and disciplines you can use to seek out truth:
- Embrace a growth mindset– in many ways, seeking truth is a process and not a conclusion, and there will be challenges on that path.
- Be open-minded – you will need to consider new perspectives and new ideas as they come, and not dismiss that which doesn’t agree with you.
- Value honesty – Honesty and truth are linked hand in glove, honesty is a subtly effective thing, and there is tremendous power in being honest about who you are or where you’re at.
- Question everything – If you want to know the ins and outs of the universe, you have to question everything around you.
- Consider other perspectives – If you want to see the whole truth, you must have the ability to see things from another set of eyes and not just your perspective.
- Evaluate and reevaluate – This is equally important and often neglected, if you’re information comes from one source – how can you be sure it’s the truth? It’s also equally important to evaluate your own biases.
81 Truth Quotes About Seeking the Right Answer
- “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.” – Buddha
- “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” – Gloria Steinem
- “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going away.” – Elvis Presley
- “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.” – Winston Churchill
- “The truth is more important than the facts.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
- “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.” – Winston Churchill
- “Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
- “You can't handle the truth!” – Aaron Sorkin (from the movie “A Few Good Men”)
- “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived, and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” – John F. Kennedy
- “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.” – Miguel de Cervantes
- “There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.” – Leo Tolstoy
- “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” – Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler)
- “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.” – Thomas Jefferson
- “The truth is the only safe ground to stand upon.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton
- “The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose, and it will defend itself.” – Augustine of Hippo
- “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” – Mark Twain
- “The truth is heavy, therefore few care to carry it.” – Anonymous
- “There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic.” – Anaïs Nin
- “The truth is rarely as interesting as the stories we invent to replace it.” – Leah Stewart
- “The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.” – Ayn Rand
- “The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” – Nadine Gordimer
- “If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.” – Émile Zola
If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.” – Émile Zola
- “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley
- “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” – Jess C. Scott
- “The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.” – Vaclav Havel
- “The truth is like salt. Men want to taste a little, but too much makes everyone sick.” – Joe Abercrombie
- “It takes two to speak the truth, one to speak and another to hear.” – Henry David Thoreau
- “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley
- “The greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our truths.” – William James
- “Tell the truth, or someone will tell it for you.” – Stephanie Klein
- “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.” – Flannery O'Connor
- “The truth is like poetry. And most people f**king hate poetry.” – Overheard in a movie (Adaptation)
- “To tell the truth is revolutionary.” – Antonio Gramsci
- “The truth will always be the truth, even when no one believes it.” – Vannetta Chapman
- “A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.” – Author Unknown
- “The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.” – Kelly Creagh
- “The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and the philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.” – Graham Greene
The truth has never been of any real value to any human being – it is a symbol for mathematicians and the philosophers to pursue. In human relations kindness and lies are worth a thousand truths.” – Graham Greene
- “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.” – Osho
- “Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” – Plato
- “The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” – Jesus Christ
- “A half-truth is a whole lie.” – Yiddish Proverb
- “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
- “Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.” – Isaac Newton
- “If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.” – Mark Twain
- “The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” – Steve Maraboli
- “All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
- “The search for truth is more precious than its possession.” – Albert Einstein
- “Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty.” – Tacitus
- “A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future.” – Anonymous
- “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” – Thomas Sowell
- “Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.” – Confucius
- “Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” – Miyamoto Musashi
Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie.” – Miyamoto Musashi
- “You find out the truth by paying attention to the details.” – Kate Millett
- “The truth is not for all men, but only for those who seek it.” – Ayn Rand
- “The truth is like a lion. You don't have to defend it. Let it loose. It will defend itself.” – Saint Augustine
- “The truth is not always beautiful, nor beautiful words the truth.” – Lao Tzu
- “A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.” – William Blake
- “Truth is never to be expected from authors whose understanding is warped with enthusiasm.” – John Dryden
- “Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.” – Warren Wiersbe
- “The truth may be bitter, but it must be said.” – Nigeria Proverb
- “We must be truthful and fair in the ordinary affairs of life before we can be truthful and fair in patriotism and religion.” – Edgar Watson Howe
- “Stop doing what is easy or popular. Start doing what is right.” – Roy T. Bennett
- “It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about nowadays saying things against one, behind one’s back, that are absolutely and entirely true.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Truth is often eclipsed but never extinguished.” – Livy
- “Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines that everybody else is saying,… [o]r else you say something which in fact is true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.” – Noam Chomsky
- “I'm not crying because of you; you're not worth it. I'm crying because my delusion of who you were was shattered by the truth of who you are.” – Steve Maraboli
- “Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him…” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him…” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort.” – Katherine Dunn
- “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
- ‘Have courage to use your own reason!'- that is the motto of enlightenment.” – Immanuel Kant
- “In a time of universal deceit – telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
- “In darkness God's truth shines most clear.” – Corrie Ten Boom
- “Humor is what happens when we're told the truth quicker and more directly than we're used to.” – George Saunders
- “What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in.” – Simone de Beauvoir
- “Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.” – Michael Jackson
- “The ability to ask questions is the greatest resource in learning the truth.” – Carl Jung
- “Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.” – Arthur Conan Doyle
Final Thoughts on Truth Quotes
Truth is one of those things that is both ever-present and hard to pin down, it’s both simple to understand and yet hard to define satisfyingly.
Truth and seeking truth (which is equally as important) is something that has progressed individuals (and the entirety of humanity) forward since our earliest days.
And if you want more inspirational quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 37 Slow Down Quotes to Enjoy Your Life
- 116 Introvert Quotes to Capture the Essence of Your Personality
- 121 Smile Quotes to Make Your Day a Little Happier
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.
