The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.

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.

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.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

If anything, I get most upset because I wanna read a good paper first thing in the morning. And if I see a lie about myself flash across the front of the cover, I don’t think much of the rest of the newspaper.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

We are motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is the more he is inspired by glory. The very philosophers themselves, even in those books which they write in contempt of glory, inscribe their names.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth… Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

Young people are just as attracted to the truth as they are convenience and expediency.

One truth stands firm. All that happens in world history rests on something spiritual. If the spiritual is strong, it creates world history. If it is weak, it suffers world history.

Tell the children the truth.

Lies are sufficient to breed opinion, and opinion brings on substance.

Everyone likes flattery; and when you come to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.

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

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

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

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.

I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.

There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

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

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

I think everybody deserves an equal amount of appreciation whether how old they are, but I mean, I’m cool with the praise. I’m good.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

People react to fear, not love; they don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

Never give in – never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

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

Purity is the feminine, truth the masculine of honor.

I promised myself that I would write as well as I can, tell the truth, not to tell everything I know, but to make sure that everything I tell is true, as I understand it. And to use the eloquence which my language affords me.

It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, else it is none.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Some are made modest by great praise, others insolent.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We never love a person, but only qualities.

Whether we’re happy with our circumstances or not, giving God praise is so important.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

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

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

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

The truth is lived, not taught.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.