Campus CrossWalk Magazine: 2007 Summer Issue -- Quotation Library: Truth

"Forgiveness does not equal Trust;
Apologies do not equal Change;
and Words do not equal Truth."
~ Anonymous.
"Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart and speaks another." ~ Homer (Iliad, 700 B.C.).
“God is truth and light his shadow.” ~ Plato, Greek Philosopher (4th century BC).
“Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.” ~ Aristotle, attributed (384–322 B.C.), Greek philosopher.
“If you add to the truth, you subtract from it.” ~ The Talmud.
“Honesty is the best policy.” ~ Miguel de Cervantes. 1547-1616. Don Quixote. (Lockhart's Translation.)
"Truth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it." ~ Blaise Pascal (1623–62), French scientist, philosopher. Pensées, (1670).
"Most of our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them." ~ François duc de la Rochefoucauld, 17th-century French memoirist and philosopher.
“Seize upon truth, wherever it is found, amongst your friends, amongst your foes, on Christian or on heathen ground; the flower’s divine where’er it grows.” ~ Isaac Watts, English hymnist, scholar, writer (1674-1748).
“A wit’s a feather, and a chief a nod.
An honest man is the noblest work of God.” ~ Alexander Pope (1688-1744), An Essay on Man.
“The Sting of a Reproach, is the Truth of it.” ~ Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack. 1746.
"First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth." ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer (1749-1832).
“O what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive!”
~ Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
“He who begins by loving Christianity better than truth, will proceed by loving his own sect or church better than Christianity, and end in loving himself better than all.” ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834), English poet, critic. Aids to Reflection, “Moral and Religious Aphorisms.”
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, d-mned lies and statistics.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81), English statesman, author.
“Truth will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; Nay, you may kick it around all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening.” ~ Oliver W. Holmes, Sr. (1809-1894).
“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;
Th’ eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, lies in pain
And dies among his worshippers.”
~ William Cullen Bryant, The Battlefield. 1839.
“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind that dim unknown,
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”
~ James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis. 1844.
"The formula 'Two and two is five' is not without its attractions." ~ Fyodor Dostoyevski (1821-1881).
“To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.” ~ John Ruskin (1819-1900), Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne, 1867.
"It is impossible to reconcile the least lack of honesty with loving." ~ Soren Kierkegaard; Works of Love (1847).
“A lie travels round the world while truth is putting on her boots.” ~ Charles Hadden Spurgeon (1834-1892), Truth and Falsehood.
"You can only learn what obedience is by obeying. It is no use asking questions; for it is only through obedience that you come to know the truth."~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The Cost of Discipleship (1937).
“The truth is sometimes a poor competitor in the marketplace of ideas—complicated, unsatisfying, full of dilemmas, always vulnerable to misinterpretation and abuse.” ~ George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950. 1951.
“It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes. It may even lie on the surface; but we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions— especially selfish ones.” ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918), Russian novelist. “Peace and Violence.” London, 1973.
“The truth isn’t always beauty, but the hunger for it is.” ~ Nadine Gordimer (b. 1923), South African author. “A Bolter and the Invincible Summer,” in London Magazine (May 1963; repr. in The Essential Gesture, ed. by Stephen Clingman, 1988).
“There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.” ~ Václav Havel (b. 1936), Czech playwright, president. Living in Truth, pt. 1, “The Power of the Powerless,” sct. 16 (1986).
“It takes few words to tell the truth.” ~ Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce.
"All truth is good, but not all truth is good to say." ~ African Proverb.
“Speak the truth and shame the devil.” ~ Francois Rabelais, Works.
"To love others well we must first love the truth." ~ Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island.
“The greatest friend of truth is time; her greatest enemy is prejudice; and her constant companion is humility.” ~ Caleb Colton.
“The house of delusions is cheap to build but drafty to live in.” ~ A.E. Housman
“Truth does not consist in minute accuracy of detail, but in conveying a right impression.” ~ Henry Alford.
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence." ~ Henri F. Amiel.
“Man seeks married white woman for discreet relationship. She should be bright, honest, and fit.” ~ Anonymous; Personal ad in the Detroit News.
"I would be fully prepared to lie under oath if I considered it to be the best thing for my kid, and I would consider that a more moral position than telling the truth." ~ Anna Quindlin, journalist (Jan. 17, 2000).
"It seemed OK for me to cheat because I knew the information, I knew I was working hard at this class, but yet I was still failing." ~ Anonymous student in the San Diego Union-Tribune, who was caught in a cheating scandal at San Diego State University. Twenty-five SDSU business students received an "F" for cheating in their business ethics course.
“From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths...
From the laziness that is content with half truths...
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth...
O God of Truth, deliver us.”
~ Author unknown.