Famous Quotes & Sayings

Thomas Paine

But such is the irresistable nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine

It is never to be expected in a revolution that every man is to change his opinion at the same moment. There never yet was any truth or any principle so irresistibly obvious that all men believed it at once. Time and reason must cooperate with each other to the final establishment of any principle; and therefore those who may happen to be first convinced have not a right to persecute others, on whom conviction operates more slowly. The moral principle of revolutions is to instruct, not to destroy.

Thomas Paine

The mind, in discovering truths, acts in the same manner as it acts through the eye in discovering objects; when once any object has been seen, it is impossible to put the mind back to the same condition it was in before it saw it.

Thomas Paine

Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing.

Thomas Paine

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

Thomas Huxley

To say that an idea is necessary is simply to affirm that we cannot conceive the contrary; and the fact that we cannot conceive the contrary of any belief may be a presumption, but is certainly no proof, of its truth.

Thomas Huxley

There is nothing of permanent value (putting aside a few human affections) nothing that satisfies quiet reflection--except the sense of having worked according to one's capacity and light to make things clear and get rid of cant and shams of all sorts.

Thomas Huxley

Veracity is the heart of morality.

Thomas Huxley

Nothing great in science has ever been done by men, whatever their powers, in whom the divine afflatus of the truth-seeker was wanting.

Thomas Huxley

History warns us that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions.

Thomas Browne

A man may be in as just possession of the truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender.

Thomas Sowell

All too often, we do smart things only after exhausting every conceivable dumb thing we could have done.

Thomas Sowell

The only thing better than "hands-on" experience is hands-off experience - enough experience to understand that some things will turn out better if left alone.

Robert Anton Wilson

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

Rob Lowe

The umbrella that I live under is that you must be truthful with everyone except when to do so would injure them or others.

Ricky Jay

If it sounds too good to be true, it always is.

Samuel Adams

All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they should.

T. S. Eliot

All significant truths are private truths. As they become public they cease to become truths; they become facts, or at best, part of the public character; or at worst, catchwords.

Sydney J. Harris

Skepticism is not an end in itself; it is a tool for the discovery of truths.

Sydney J. Harris

Honesty consists of the unwillingness to lie to others; maturity, which is equally hard to attain, consists of the unwillingness to lie to oneself.

Susan Sontag

I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.

Susan Sontag

The truth is balance. However the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

Scott Westerfeld

I guess sometimes you have to lie to find the truth.

Scott Adams

Our perceptions of truth are built around what is practical, not what is true. Even the smartest human brain doesn't have the capacity for discerning true facts. That's why so many of us settle for scientific facts. It's the best we can do.

Ray Nagin

Candor is the only way I know how to do it. I'm way too old to change. At the end of the day, I believe the truth is stronger than any lie that's out there.

Rajneesh

If you have found your truth within yourself there is nothing more in this whole existence to find.

Thomas Jefferson

With those who wish to think amiss of me, I have learnt to be perfectly indifferent: but where I know a mind to be ingenuous, andto need only truth to set it to rights, I cannot be as passive.

Thomas Jefferson

If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?

Thomas Jefferson

For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead....

Thomas Jefferson

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong.

Thomas Jefferson

There is not a truth existing which I fear... or would wish unknown to the whole world.

Thomas Jefferson

When all government ...in little as in great things... shall be drawn to Washington as the center of all power; it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.