Live truth instead of professing it.

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

We forfeit three-quarters of ourselves in order to be like other people.

No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

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.

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

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

Do not tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.

I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that’s the way I am.

In past generations, people would try to play younger than they really are. My trick is, I don’t try to play younger than I really am.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

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

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

There is not a truth existing which I fear… or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

Ability without honor is useless.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

It’s no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don’t know how to weep with their whole heart don’t know how to laugh either.

I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

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

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

A promise must never be broken.

I think that by staying true to myself and making music from my heart, the blessings come.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself. Guys who have to pretend to be tough, they ain’t. I’m tough.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

If one could be friendly with women, what a pleasure – the relationship so secret and private compared with relations with men. Why not write about it truthfully?

I didn’t come to Hollywood. Hollywood came to me. A lot of people wish they could say the things I say. Everyone out here is so phony, it’s sickening.

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

Seeing is not always believing.

There’s no real excuse for being successful enough as an actor to do what you want and then selling out. You do it pure. You don’t try to adapt it, make it commercial.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

Truth is the property of no individual but is the treasure of all men.

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.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

There is nothing in the world more shameful than establishing one’s self on lies and fables.

We have but one permanent home: heaven – that’s still the old truth that we always have to re-learn – and it’s only through the impact of sad experiences that we assimilate it.

I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.

I never gave anybody hell! I just told the truth and they thought it was hell.

I tend not to like an awful lot of what is going out under my name now because it is just all product. Who needs it?

Truth has rough flavours if we bite it through.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

My parents were the same in the pulpit as they were at home. I think that’s where a lot of preachers‘ kids get off base sometimes. Because they don’t see the same things at both places.

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.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.