Truth Quotes

1. By listening, one will learn truths. By hearing, one will only learn half truths. - Chinese Fortune

2. The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth. – Goethe

3. There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home. - Unknown

4. So we must allow the other to speak back to us, not in conformity to what we want to hear, but in fidelity to the other's truth. The truth we are seeking, the truth that seeks us, lies ultimately in the community of being where we not only know, but are known. - Parker J. Palmer

5. All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. - Galileo Galilei

6. Truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it. - Pearl Buck

7. A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulging in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves, in the end, like an animal, in satisfying his vices. It all comes from lying...lying to others and lying to yourself. - Fyodor Dostoesvsky

8. Truth is truth, where'er tis found,
    On Christian or on heathen ground.
    - Unknown

9. Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always. - Albert Schweitzer

10. There is nothing so powerful as truth - and often nothing so strange. - Daniel Webster

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An Excerpt from Absolute Truth, by Spencer W. Kimball:

There are absolute truths and relative truths. The rules of dietetics have changed many times in my lifetime. Many scientific findings have changed from year to year. The scientists taught for decades that the world was once a nebulous, molten mass cast off from the sun, and later many scientists said it once was a whirl of dust which solidified. There are many ideas advanced to the world that have been changed to meet the needs of the truth as it has been discovered. There are relative truths, and there are also absolute truths which are the same yesterday, today, and forever—never changing.

These absolute truths are not altered by the opinions of men. As science has expanded our understanding of the physical world, certain accepted ideas of science have had to be abandoned in the interest of truth. Some of these seeming truths were stoutly maintained for centuries. The sincere searching of science often rests only on the threshold of truth, whereas revealed facts give us certain absolute truths as a beginning point so we may come to understand the nature of man and the purpose of his life.

The earth is spherical. If all the four billion people in the world think it flat, they are in error. That is an absolute truth, and all the arguing in the world will not change it. Weights will not suspend themselves in the air, but when released will fall earthward. The law of gravity is an absolute truth. It never varies. Greater laws can overcome lesser ones, but that does not change their undeniable truth.

We learn about these absolute truths by being taught by the Spirit. These truths are "independent" in their spiritual sphere and are to be discovered spiritually, though they may be confirmed by experience and intellect (see D&C 93:30). The great prophet Jacob said that "the Spirit speaketh the truth. . . . Wherefore, it speaketh of things as they really are, and of things as they really will be." (Jacob 4:13). We needed to be taught in order to understand life and who we really are.

God, our Heavenly Father—Elohim—lives. That is an absolute truth. All four billion of the children of men on the earth might be ignorant of him and his attributes and his powers, but he still lives. All the people on the earth might deny him and disbelieve, but he lives in spite of them. They may have their own opinions, but he still lives, and his form, powers, and attributes do not change according to men's opinions. In short, opinion alone has no power in the matter of an absolute truth. He still lives. And Jesus Christ is the Son of God, the Almighty, the Creator, the Master of the only true way of life—the gospel of Jesus Christ. The intellectual may rationalize him out of existence and the unbeliever may scoff, but Christ still lives and guides the destinies of his people. That is an absolute truth; there is no gainsaying.

The watchmaker in Switzerland, with materials at hand, made the watch that was found in the sand in a California desert. The people who found the watch had never been to Switzerland, nor seen the watchmaker, nor seen the watch made. The watchmaker still existed, no matter the extent of their ignorance or experience. If the watch had a tongue, it might even lie and say, "There is no watchmaker." That would not alter the truth.

If men are really humble, they will realize that they discover, but do not create, truth.