The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

No man was ever great by imitation.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

Old is authentic. Old is genuine. Old is valuable.

It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality is more important than the feeling for pictures.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

The single most powerful thing I can be is to be myself.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

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

Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out an death’s the other.

I just think you ought to talk straight with your people.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain’t goin‘ away.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

It’s a very confusing era that we’re in.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

I was gratified to be able to answer promptly, and I did. I said I didn’t know.

Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.

Reparations – not just aid – should be provided by those responsible for devastating Iraqi civilian society by cruel sanctions and military actions, and – together with other criminal states – for supporting Saddam Hussein through his worst atrocities and beyond. That is the minimum that honesty requires.

Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn’t.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

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

President Assad, I worked with. I know him reasonably well, met with him a few times, and he’s a liar.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Elegance is refusal.

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

I just want to be myself.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

The shortest answer is doing the thing.

I know a lot of artists say this, but it’s hard to put myself in a box. I just write songs that I strongly believe in and that are coming form a special place. There’s no tricks.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

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.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

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

There are things around, and I know where they can be got quite easily, but I quite like waking up to the sunshine.

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.

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

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

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.

I’ve seen zero evidence of any nation on Earth other than Mexico even remotely having the slightest clue what Mexican food is about or even come close to reproducing it. It is perhaps the most misunderstood country and cuisine on Earth.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

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

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

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

I don’t do things for the response or for the controversy. I just live my life.