Truth

Now seems like a good time to contemplate the notion of truth, so I am posting several quotes to ponder.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
-John Fitzgerald Kennedy

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
-George Orwell

Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.
-Miguel de Cervantes

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.
-Aldous Huxley

Seek not greatness, but seek truth and you will find both.
-Horace Mann

Respect for the truth comes close to being the basis for all morality.
-Frank Herbert

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
-William Blake

To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable, we must be credible; to be credible, we must be truthful.
-Edward R. Murrow

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
-George Bernard Shaw

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
-Mark Twain

A man can?t be always defending the truth; there must be a time for him to feed on it.
-C.S. Lewis

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and truth rewarded me.
-Simone de Beauvoir

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
-Oscar Wilde

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow up, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.
-Emile Zola

We are hidden in ourselves, like a truth hidden in isolated facts. When we know that this One in us is One in all, then our truth is revealed.
-Rabindranath Tagore

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.
-Leo Tolstoy

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.
-Socrates

We do not err because truth is difficult to see. It is visible at a glance. We err because this is more comfortable.
-Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

The discovery of truth is prevented more effectively, not by the false appearance things present and which mislead into error, not directly by weakness of the reasoning powers, but by preconceived opinion, by prejudice.
-Arthur Schopenhauer

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along.
-Carl Sagan

Error, indeed, is never set forth in its naked deformity, lest, being thus exposed, it should at once be detected. But it is craftily decked out in an attractive dress, so as, by its outward form, to make it appear to the inexperienced?more true than the truth itself. One far superior to me has well said?, 'A clever imitation in glass casts contempt, as it were, on that precious jewel the emerald...' Lest, therefore, through my neglect, some should be carried off, even as sheep are by wolves, while they perceive not the true character of these men, because they outwardly are covered with sheep's clothing (against whom the Lord has enjoined us to be on our guard), and because their language resembles ours, while their sentiments are very different.
-Irenaeus of Lyons

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
-Thomas Jefferson