Quotes: Truth. Tyranny.

Truth
Those who did not act on truth in their lives will lose this knowledge of truth when they die.
Truth 131 Emanuel Swedenborg: “That the spirits who knew truth in this life, but did it not, at death shall lose this knowledge.” Emerson, Method of Nature.

Truth is revealed only to disinterested seekers.
Truth 10 Truth is a jealous mistress and will reveal herself not a whit to any but a disinterested seeker.... E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

He suggests that nighttime fears and apprehensions are truer than reality as seen during the day.
Truth 125 Sometimes, he suggests, one’s nighttime fears and apprehensions are closer to the truth than the hard facts seen in mundane light. Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

The Greeks recognized that truth was paradoxical and accepted both sides of the paradox.
Truth 318 They [the Greeks] saw both sides of the paradox of truth, giving predominance to neither, and in all Greek art there is an absence of struggle, a reconciling power, something of calm and serenity, the world has yet to see again. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

People are fearless who recognize and accept reality regardless that it does its worst to them.
Truth 370 Melville: “By visible truth we mean the apprehension of the absolute condition of present things as they strike the eye of the man who fears them not, though they do their worst to him….” Mellow, Hawthorne in His Times.

The devout seek truth with their hearts, not their minds.
Truth 84 The devout are always urged to seek the absolute truth with their hearts and not their minds. Hoffer, The True Believer

People cannot be forced to accept truth.
Truth 190 Man cannot be forced to accept the truth. Pope John Paul II, Threshold

Every truth contains some error.
Truth 431 Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or a little mistaken. Austen, Emma

Can the devil speak the truth?
Truth 310 Waverley: What, can the devil speak truth? Sir Walter Scott, Waverley.

No truth is ugly.
Truth 663 You are teaching people to understand that no truth is ugly, and no lie is beautiful. Irving Stone, The Passions of the Mind (Life of Freud).

We accept lies as truth and demand the same lies from others.
Truth 272 …we consider the veriest lies as truth and demand the same lies from others. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Different religions and philosophies are simply different manifestations of the same truth.
Truth 291 Carlyle: …diverse religions and philosophies are but the changing garments of one eternal truth. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Kant.

Truth is the unity of many opposed parts.
Truth 295 Truth…is an organic unity of opposed parts. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Hegel.

Truth lies in the coordination of antagonistic ideas.
Truth 365 Spencer: Truth generally lies in the coordination of antagonistic opinions. Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Herbert Spencer.

Imaginative literature gives the impression of truth.
Truth 25 John Hersey: …among all the means of communication now available, imaginative literature comes closer than any to being able to give an impression of the truth. Hull, ed. The Writer’s Book.

Truth is in the connection between cause and effect.
Truth 701 Truth, or the connection between cause and effect, alone interests us. Emerson, Representative Men: Montaigne, or The Skeptic.

Use truth.
Truth 761 …to honor every truth by use. Emerson, Representative Men, Goethe, or the Writer.

Focusing on only one aspect of truth distorts the whole truth and becomes falsehood.
Truth 424 Truth is our element of life, yet a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth, and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood. Emerson, Intellect.

He wanted to know the blunt truth about the enemy in order to save lives.
Truth 184 …Stilwell wanted above all to be well informed, to know his own men’s and the enemy’s capabilities, and he knew that anything less than the blunt truth and blunt intelligence about the enemy might cost him lives, his boys. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

The worse the news the more he needed it—accurately.
Truth 184 [For Stilwell] it did not matter whether the news was good or bad; the worse the news, the more you needed it. Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest.

Truth is what others can be persuaded to believe.
Truth 227 Our truth of today is not what is, but what others can be persuaded to believe…. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Truth can be learned from error more easily than from confusion.
Truth 89 Francis Bacon: Truth comes out of error more easily than out of confusion. A Random Walk in Science.

The Romans lie when they appear to be telling the truth and speak truth when they seem to be telling a lie, so much so that no one should believe them under any conditions.
Truth 1193 In short, they [the Romans] lie so much like truth, and speak truth so much as if they were telling a lie, that their auditor suspects himself in the wrong, whether he believes or disbelieves them. Hawthorne, The Marble Faun.

There are no new truths.
Truth 827 There are no new truths, much as we have prided ourselves on finding some.

The human mind is so varied that no truth appears the same to any two people.
Truth 512 At this meeting Pierre was for the first time struck by the endless variety of the human mind, preventing any truth from ever presenting itself in the same way to any two persons. Tolstoi, War and Peace.

Truths from emotions are moral; truths from reason are the result of reflection.
Truth 153 Albert Schweitzer: I was always, even as a boy, engrossed in the philosophical problem of the relation between emotion and reason;...truths that we derive from the emotions are of a moral kind--compassion, kindness, forgiveness, love for our neighbor;...reason...teaches...truths that come from reflection. Anderson, The Schweitzer Album.

Seek the truth, not emotional satisfaction.
Truth xxi Careful always to seek for truth and not for our own emotional satisfaction…. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Truth will win in the end.
Truth 64 …believing with naïveté that the truth is strong by itself and cannot lose in the end. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Truth justifies itself.
Truth 143 “The truth is its own justification….” Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Making debating points rather than seeking the truth.
Truth 215 The Congress alternately dozed and shouted, and its members sought to make debating points rather than to find the truth. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Does suppressing the truth ever pay?
Truth 226 …does it ever pay to suppress the truth? Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

It takes a lot of negotiation to tell the truth.
Truth 352 It is rather extraordinary how men must plot and combine and negotiate merely to tell the truth. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

We believe that two and two are four and that black is black and white is white.
Truth 383 We whose names are hereunto subscribed do solemnly declare, that we do in our consciences believe two and two make four; and that we shall adjudge any man whatsoever to be our enemy who endeavors to persuade us to the contrary…that it is our resolution as long as we live to call black black, and white white. Addison, 7/25/1711. The Spectator.

Make the people laugh when you tell them the truth or they will kill you.
Truth 106 George Bernard Shaw once observed, “If you tell people the truth, make them laugh or they’ll kill you.” Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “A Critic at Large: The Strong Woman.”
The New Yorker (Nov. 11, 1996), pp. 106-118.

He told them the truth, but he transformed it into a lie.
Truth and falsehood 242 He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood. Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter.

The intellect needs the truth cloaked in rhetoric and the will needs it presented as illusion.
Truth and Will 1123 The intellect is stimulated by the statement of truth in a trope, and the will by clothing the laws of life in illusion. Emerson, The Conduct of Life: Illusions.

The drama is not literal truth.
Truth drama 27 Literalness was not the truth, especially in drama. Blum, V Was for Victory

Ideology masquerades as truth.
Truth ideology 164 The world, tired of ideology, is opening itself to the truth. Pope John Paul II, Threshold

Truth in poetry and the truth of science are both true.
Truth poetry science 31 The truth of poetry and the truth of science were both true. E. Hamilton. The Greek Way.

Tyranny
Tyranny triumphs if the people are amused.
Tyranny 600 …the maxim of the tyrant, “If you would rule the world quietly, you must keep it amused.” Emerson, New England Reformers.