The following is a categorized list of truth theme statements created from information obtained from the Internet:
The acquired information has been organized into categories and a few notes of my own have been added before some of the themes which are list in bullets.
Truth Is True
Not being known does not stop truth from being true. The universe is what it is and we are what we are quite independent of what we think and say about it.
- Truth draws strength from itself and not from the number of votes in its favor.
- Truth stands, even if there be no public support; it is self-sustained.
- An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.
Truth Masking
There is much error in the world today. People lie both deliberately and through ignorance. Effort is required to see through what comes to one; is it truth or error?
- The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
Truth Seeker
- There are very few lovers of truth, for truth’s sake, even amongst those who persuade themselves that they are so.
Truth Seeking
- Not being known doesn’t stop truth from being true.
- If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things.
- When the mind seeks truth, the truth it has read about in books, that “truth” is self-projected, for then the mind is merely in pursuit of the known, a more satisfactory known than the previous one. When the mind seeks truth, it is seeking its own self-projection, not truth.
- The search for truth is the most important work in the world; and the most dangerous.
Truth Acquisition
Acquiring truth requires identifying and evaluating propositions. Therefore, truth acquisition comes from understanding gained from experience. One can actively seek the truth or learn simply by existing and experiencing what occurs.
- Truth requires us to face the facts as they are, not to involve ourselves in self-deception; to refuse to think merely in slogans.
- Let us deal with the realities as they actually are, not as they might have been, and not as we wish they were. […] The truth doesn’t die.
Teaching Truth
- It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of the truth.
Truth Criteria
How can one know if something is true?
- Gentlemen, that is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand it, and we don’t know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know it must be the truth.
- Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.
- Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth.
- Believe those who seek the truth, doubt those who say they find it.
Standing for Truth
- Tell the truth and fear no man.
- Truth is the cry of all, but the game of the few.
Conform to Truth
- Hell is truth seen too late—duty neglected in its season.
- Chase after the truth like all hell and you’ll free yourself, even though you never touch its coat tails.
- Yet ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
Belief
- People never want to be told anything they do not already believe.
- Although a large group of men say something is so; that does not make it so.
- The opinions and belief of men depend not on their own will, but follow involuntarily the evidence proposed to their minds.
Religious “Truth”
Christians believe certain things to be true by faith in those whose group they are members; this is not truth.
- Truth, in matters of religion, is simply the opinion that has survived.
- It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope.