Quotes to inspire and reflect

When a nation has allowed itself to fall under a tyrannical regime, it cannot be absolved from the faults due to the guilt of that regime.

The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within.

[l]t is in fact far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

This is a sickness rooted and inherent / in the nature of a tyranny: / that he that holds it does not trust his friends.

Artists have no less talents than ever; their taste, their vision, their sentiment are often interesting; they are mighty in their independence and feeble only in their works.

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning.

Whoever has not felt the danger of our times palpitating under his hand, has not really penetrated to the vitals of destiny, he has merely pricked its surface.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

[The Jazz Age] was borrowed time anyhow—the whole upper tenth of a nation living with the insouciance of grand dues and the casualness of chorus girls.

Modern man—whether in the womb of the masses, or with his workmates, or with his family, or alone—can never for one moment forget that he is living in a world in which he is a means and whose end is not his business.

O, while you live, tell truth and shame the devil!

Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.

The inability to lie is far from the love of truth.

They deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth.

All truths that are kept silent become poisonous.

On the one hand, we may tell the truth, regardless of consequences, and on the other hand we may mellow it and sophisticate it to make it humane and tolerable.

To be wiser than other men is to be honester than they; and strength of mind is only courage to see and speak the truth.

A man’s word / Is believed just to the extent of the wealth in his coffers stored.

All truth is not to be told at all times.

He that does not speak truth to me does not believe me when I speak truth.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is, “Let there be truth between us two for evermore.”

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

What kind of truth is it which has these mountains as its boundary and is a lie beyond them?

We perceive an image of truth, and possess only a lie.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

Lies are the religion of slaves and bosses. Truth is the god of the free man.

If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.

Though truth and falsehood be / Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.

Would that I could discover truth as easily as I can uncover falsehood.

It is only a good, sound, truthful person, who can lie to any good purpose; if a man is not habitually truthful his very lies will be false to him and betray him.

For what is Truth? In matters of religion, it is simply the opinion that has survived. In matters of science, it is the ultimate sensation. In matters of art, it is one’s last mood.

Every thing to be true must become a religion.

Heaven knows what seeming nonsense may not tomorrow be demonstrated truth.

Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.

There are certain truths so true that they are practically unbelievable.

Knowledge for the sake of knowledge! Truth for truth’s sake! This is inhuman.

Between whom there is hearty truth there is love.

So little trouble do men take in the search after truth; so readily do they accept whatever comes first to hand.

Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It’s the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn’t make any difference so long as it is honored.

Truth looks tawdry when she is overdressed.

The truth is always the strongest argument.

Deep truth is imageless.

The truth, my friends, is not eloquent, except unspoken; its vast shadow lends eloquence to our sparks of thought as they die into it.

Truth’s open to everyone, and the claims aren’t all staked yet.

Truths may clash without contradicting each other.

Even under the most favourable circumstances no mortal can be asked to seize the truth in its wholeness or at its centre.

Truth is not that which is demonstrable but that which is ineluctable.

No truth is proved, no truth achieved, by argument, and the ready-made truths men offer you are mere conveniences or drugs to make you sleep.