It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

I have hardly ever known a mathematician who was capable of reasoning.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

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

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

Though she be but little, she is fierce.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

There’s a tremendous gap between public opinion and public policy.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

The object of the superior man is truth.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Silence is the mother of truth.

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

If you want to become fully mature in the Lord, you must learn to love truth. Otherwise, you will always leave open a door of deception for the enemy to take what is meant to be yours.

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

The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it… I can resist everything but temptation.

It is good to express a thing twice right at the outset and so to give it a right foot and also a left one. Truth can surely stand on one leg, but with two it will be able to walk and get around.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

In politics stupidity is not a handicap.

Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

If a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live.

Fiction is not necessarily about what you know, it’s about how you feel. That is the truth about fiction, and the other truth is that all science is a tool, and we use our tools not to actualise what we know, but to implement how we feel.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

The stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired.

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Love is too young to know what conscience is.

Fiction is such a world of freedom, it’s wonderful. If you want someone to fly, they can fly.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Let blockheads read what blockheads wrote.

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

‚Tis best to weigh the enemy more mighty than he seems.

If there is one thing I fear less than everything else, it is, I believe, persecution for my opinions. There are a good many points about which I may be diffident, but when it comes to questions of Truth and intellectual independence, there is no holding me – I can envisage no finer end than to sacrifice oneself for a conviction.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

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.

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.

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books.

It’s not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.

I tried being reasonable, I didn’t like it.

Fools admire, but men of sense approve.

In our time political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.

There are two bowlers who I think are very tough to play against – Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

I can stand brute force, but brute reason is quite unbearable. There is something unfair about its use. It is hitting below the intellect.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Stupidity is a talent for misconception.

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

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

In assisting his ‚neighbour‘ every day to the best of his ability, and keeping truth, honesty, and kindness perpetually before him, the Boy Scout, with as little formality as possible, is pleasing God.