Truth

"For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." John F. Kennedy

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." Friedrich Nietzsche

"All generalizations are false, including this one." Mark Twain

"The simplest and most familiar truth seems new and wonderful the instant we ourselves experience it for the first time." Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"The highest conceivable degree of lying is reached when judgment between truth and falsehood ceases and the liar believes his own lie and is indignant that others place doubt in his words." Franz von Holtzendorff

"If you tell a lie, tell a big one." Joseph Goebbels

"The right question is usually more important than the right answer." Platon

"It is a duty to tell the truth. The concept of duty is inseparable from the concept of rights. A duty is what, in a being, corresponds to the rights of another. Where there are no rights, there are no duties. Therefore, telling the truth is a duty; but only towards those who have a right to the truth. However, no person has the right to a truth that harms others." Benjamin Constant

"Tell people an invisible man in the sky created all things, they believe you. Tell them what you've painted is wet, they have to touch it to believe." George Carlin

"To cling to the past is guaranteed suicide. To remain apathetic is assured enslavement. To learn the truth and then act on it is the only means of survival at this moment." Bill Cooper

"It is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true." Max Weber

"Ignorance is less remote from the truth than prejudice." Denis Diderot

"There is great worth in holding universal truths and timelessly beautiful words in your heart, which will stay there forever, infusing your thoughts and speech." Dan Stevens

"What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what “the stars foretell,” avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the unguessable “verdict of history” – what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!" Robert A. Heinlein