In everything truth surpasses the imitation and copy.

Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

I just want to be myself.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.

One of my big fears is people saying my songs are all starting to sound the same.

I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

I love that I can talk to my fans through Twitter, to cut out the middle man. Because I’ve done interviews where my words have gotten twisted, so it’s nice to be able to have things coming straight from me.

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

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

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

This is not a showman’s job. I will not step out of character.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

Science is but an image of the truth.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

My kind of composing is more like the work of a gardener. The gardener takes his seeds and scatters them, knowing what he is planting but not quite what will grow where and when – and he won’t necessarily be able to reproduce it again afterwards either.

Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.

Of course it’s the same old story. Truth usually is the same old story.

I always try to be myself. Ever since I was an introverted kid, I’d get on stage and be able to break out of my shell.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

I write from my soul. This is the reason that critics don’t hurt me, because it is me. If it was not me, if I was pretending to be someone else, then this could unbalance my world, but I know who I am.

I think there is a little magic in the fact that I’m so totally real but look so artificial at the same time.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

Self-talk, for me, has been the biggest thing in my life. A lot of us have a dialogue that is crap. It’s a crappy dialogue. We live in a world right now that is very external. Everything is very on the surface. Superficial. Everything. And what we’re telling ourselves is what we see on TV.

Too much and too little wine. Give him none, he cannot find truth; give him too much, the same.

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

I’m not frightened of appearing vulnerable.

I try to not focus on what people expect from me.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

Engineering training deals with the exact sciences. That sort of exactness makes for truth and conscience. It might be good for the world if more men had that sort of mental start in life even if they did not pursue the profession.

I have never used Auto-Tune in a live television performance, and I have never used Auto-Tune in any of my concerts. That is a promise.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

Be as you wish to seem.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

I never do anything that I don’t want to do.

I don’t know that you can put a label on growth. I’m just me.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.