All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

The truth is often terrifying, which I think is one of the motifs of Larry and Andrew’s cinema. The cost of knowledge is an important theme. In the second and third films, they explore the consequences of Neo’s choice to know the truth. It’s a beautiful, beautiful story.

I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

I have been a professor, and I have been a policymaker, and as a professor, you think in terms of truth or absolutes.

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

The truth is, I have absolutely no professional credentials – literally, which is why I’m teaching at MIT.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

Obey the principles without being bound by them.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Nothing is beautiful, only man: on this piece of naivete rests all aesthetics, it is the first truth of aesthetics. Let us immediately add its second: nothing is ugly but degenerate man – the domain of aesthetic judgment is therewith defined.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Of life’s two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer’s hand.

When virtue is lost, benevolence appears, when benevolence is lost right conduct appears, when right conduct is lost, expedience appears. Expediency is the mere shadow of right and truth; it is the beginning of disorder.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

My whole life has been one big improvisation.

Control and surrender have to be kept in balance. That’s what surfers do – take control of the situation, then be carried, then take control. In the last few thousand years, we’ve become incredibly adept technically. We’ve treasured the controlling part of ourselves and neglected the surrendering part.

Knowledge is true opinion.

I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

We should learn to accept that change is truly the only thing that’s going on always, and learn to ride with it and enjoy it.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

Justice and truth are too such subtle points that our tools are too blunt to touch them accurately.

Genius is always allowed some leeway, once the hammer has been pried from its hands and the blood has been cleaned up.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning.

I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts.

If there’s one thing that’s certain in business, it’s uncertainty.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Silence is the mother of truth.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

Facts are stubborn things.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

Every time I say something that’s extremely truthful out loud, it literally breaks the Internet.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Perhaps I can say that I am a bit astute, that I can adapt to circumstances, but it is also true that I am a bit naive. Yes, but the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon.