Quotes about Truth

No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked. No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will. And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods. Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.

But it seems to me to be an imperfection in things of beauty, and a weakness in man, if an explanation from the shallow-side has a destructive effect. The horror which we feel for Freudian interpretations is entirely due to our own barbaric or childish naivete, which believes that there can be heights without corresponding depths, and which blinds us to the really "final" truth that, when carried to extremes, opposites meet.

Not the criticism of individual contemporaries will decide the truth or falsity of these discoveries, but future generations. There are things that are not yet true today, perhaps we dare not find them true, but tomorrow they may be. So every man whose fate it is to go his individual way must proceed with hopefulness and watchfulness, ever conscious of his loneliness and its dangers.

The way to truth stands open only to those without intentions.

Where the many are, there is security; what the many believe must of course be true; what the many want must be worth striving for, and necessary, and therefore good.

All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to the world by the hands of story-tellers and image-makers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even apprehensible; and the prophets would prophesy and the teachers teach in vain.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.

My worst flaw is that I tell secrets, my own and everybody else's.

Nothing can grow in the shade of secrets, she would say, love needs light and space to flourish.

How many times have I told you not to believe everything you hear? Seek truth for yourself.