Search Of Truth Quotes

Endless is the search of truth. ~ Laurence Sterne

The Blue Fly"

Five summer days, five summer nights,
The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly
Hung without motion on the cling peach
Humming occasionally 'O my love, my fair one!'
As in the canticles.

Magnified one thousand times, the insect
Looks farcically human; laugh if you will!
Bald head, stage fairy wings, blear eyes,
A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles,
Long spindly thighs.

The crime was detected on the sixth day.
What then could be said or done? By anyone?
It would have been vindictive, mean, and what-not,
To swat that fly for being a blue-fly,
For debauch of a peach.

Is it fair either, to bring a microscope
To bear on the case, even in search of truth?
Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause
To glut the carriers of her epidemics -
Nor did the peach complain. ~ Robert Graves

There can be many opinions on a thing, but there is only one truth."

Vashet smiled lazily. "And if the pursuit of the truth was my goal, that would concern me." She gave a long yawn, stretching like a happy cat. "Instead I will focus on the joy in my heart, [...} ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Men and women cannot rest content with a superficial and unquestioning exchange of skeptical opinions and experiences of life - all of us are in search of truth and we share this profound yearning today more than ever ... ~ Pope Benedict XVI

We are all familiar with intellectuals who speak only on behalf of their country, class, religion, 'race,' 'gender,' or 'sexual orientation,' and who shape their opinions according to what they take to be the interest of their affinity of birth or predilection. But the distinctive feature of the liberal intellectual in past times was precisely the striving for universality; not the unworldly or disingenuous denial of sectional identification but the sustained effort to transcend that identification in search of truth or the general interest ... In today's America, neoconservatives generate brutish policies for which liberals provide the ethical fig leaf. There really is no other diifference between them. ~ Tony Judt

Instincts are effective tools of survival, but when it comes to finding true answers to real questions, your rational thinking is the person to do the job. That is why seeking truth requires keeping your innate instincts and biases in check. ~ Abhijit Naskar

The search of truth and understanding is an infinite adventure. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Steady, patient, persevering thinking will generally surmount every obstacle in search of truth. ~ Nathanael Emmons

He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. ~ John Locke

The honest investigator must be prepared to follow wherever the search of truth may lead. Truth is often found in the most unexpected places. He must, with fearless and open mind insist that facts are far more important than any cherished, mistaken beliefs, no matter how unpleasant the facts or how delightful the beliefs. ~ Hugh B. Brown

The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for certainty and for unity; and the snobbish desire to earn the label scientist when that became a high social and intellectual rank. But these efforts, even though vain, have not been without harm, to the inventors and to the world at large. The "findings" have inspired policies affecting daily life that were enforced with the same absolute assurance as earlier ones based on religion. At the same time, the workers in the realm of intuition, the gifted finessers - artists, moralists, philosophers, historians, political theorists, and theologians - were either diverted from their proper task, while others were looking on them with disdain as dabblers in the suburbs of Truth. ~ Jacques Barzun

There is a marvellous Indian story of a boy who leaves home in search of truth. He goes to various teachers, walking endlessly in various parts of the country, every teacher asserting something or other. After many years, as an old man, after searching, searching, asking, meditating, taking certain postures, breathing rightly, fasting, no sex and all that, he comes back to his old house. As he opens the door there it is: the truth is just there. You understand? You might say, 'It wouldn't have been there if he hadn't wandered all over the place.' That's a cunning remark, but you miss the beauty of the story if you don't see that truth is not to be sought after. Truth is not something to be attained, to be experienced, to be held. It is there for those who can see it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

More important than the search for truth is acceptance of ignorance. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Think the truth - act the truth - live the truth. ~ Abhijit Naskar

[M]an is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road. ~ John Locke

Faust has spent his youth and manhood,
not as others do, in the sunny crowded paths of profit,
or among the rosy bowers of pleasure, but darkly and alone in the search of Truth; is it fit that Truth
should now hide herself, and his sleepless pilgrimage
towards Knowledge and Vision end in the pale
shadow of Doubt? To his dream of a glorious higher
happiness, all earthly happiness has been sacrificed;
friendship, love, the social rewards of ambition were
cheerfully cast aside, for his eye and his heart were
bent on a region of clear and supreme good ; and now,
in its stead, he finds isolation, silence, and despair.
What solace remains ? Virtue once promised to be
her own reward ; but because she does not pay him in
the current coin of worldly enjoyment, he reckons her
too a delusion; and, like Brutus, reproaches as a
shadow what he once worshipped as a substance.
Whither shall he now tend 1 For his loadstars have
gone out one by one ; and as the darkness fell, the
strong steady wind has changed into a fierce and
aimless tornado. Faust calls himself a monster,
" without object, yet without rest. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Sarah Jane turned to face me square on, her eyes full of compassion and wisdom and strength I could never match. "You are the gaurdian, Jess. The truth is inside you if you look for it. Trust that you're here because you're destined to be. ~ Kay Cassidy

Returning from the wilderness a man becomes a restorer of order, a preserver. He sees the truth, recognizes his true heir, honors his forbears and his heritage, and gives his blessing to his successors. He embodies the passing of human time, living and dying within the human limits of grief and joy. ~ Wendell Berry

Industries, unlike organisms, have no organic limits on their own growth; they are constantly in search of new markets, or of new ways to exploit old ones more effectively; as Karl Marx unsympathetically observed, they 'nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere. ~ Tim Wu

Sun keeps rising. Days keep passing. World keeps spinning. Time, it just keeps moving forward. Weeks, months, even years go by... while you try to make sense of it all. Try to find where you belong. Try to look ahead to a better future. But the truth is the path ahead has only grown darker. It's harder to see. You can feel so lost, so alone, so desperate for something, anything that might show you the way. ~ Robert Kirkman

I think that no one individual can look at truth. It blinds you. You look at it and you see one phase of it. Someone else looks at it and sees a slightly awry phase of it. But taken all together, the truth is in what they saw though nobody saw the truth intact. ~ William Faulkner

the truth was simple: here stood this door alone on an endless stretch of beach, and it was for only one of two things: opening or leaving closed. The ~ Stephen King

Previous journeys in search of treasure have taught me that a zigzag strategy is the best way to get ahead. ~ Tahir Shah

It is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. To have fallen into any one of the fads from Gnosticism to Christian Science would indeed have been obvious and tame. But to have avoided them all has been one whirling adventure; and in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Jesus from the moment he first appears in Galilee is a sign of contradiction, fomenting revolution through telling the truth about the state of the world, the reality of evil, and the eye of God, who judges in a different vein altogether than courts of law, whether they be religious canons, the ecclesiastical courts, or government legal systems. ~ Megan McKenna

She felt likee doing her part to change the world, so she started by giving thanks for all the blessings of her life, rather than bemoaning all that was missing from it. Then she complimented her reflection in the mirror, instead of criticizing it as she usually did. Next she walked into her neighborhood and offered her smile to everyone she passed, whether or not they offered theirs to her. Each day she did these things, and soon they became habit. Each day she lived with more gratitude, more acceptance, more kindnesss. And sure enough, the world around her began to change. Because she had decided so, she was single-handedly doing her part to change it ~ Scott Stabile

There's truth in patterns but it's the kind of truth that's hard to accept - the truth we don't always see because we're not always looking. ~ Adam Gnade

And this tattooing, had been the work of a departed prophet and seer of his island, who, by those hieroglyphic marks, had written out on his body a complete theory of the heavens and the earth, and a mystical treatise on the art of attaining truth; so that Queequeg in his own proper person was a riddle to unfold; a wondrous work in one volume; but whose mysteries not even himself could read, though his own live heart beat against them; and these mysteries were therefore destined in the end to moulder away with the living parchment whereon they were inscribed, and so be unsolved to the last. ~ Herman Melville

But the sort of honor Richard was talking about was flattery, not truth. It wasn't real. Honor that was given to you because of how you were born - that was just a delusion. She wasn't going to rely on Parliament - or the people around her - to provide an assessment of herself. They were fickle and untrustworthy. ~ Courtney Milan

The same inexpressible Truth is experienced in two ways: as Self-luminous Silence, or as the Eternal Play of the One. ~ Anandamayi Ma

Never let the cloud of anxiety spread shadows of doubt on your inner peace and happiness. ~ Debasish Mridha

Belief in the liberating power of knowledge has become the ruling illusion of modern humankind. Most want to believe that some kind of explanation or understanding will deliver them from their conflicts. Yet being divided from yourself goes with being self-aware. This is the truth in the Genesis myth: the Fall is not an event at the beginning of history but the intrinsic condition of self-conscious beings. ~ John Gray

With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains of life too hard to bear, I have nothing to do; and, so far as it may be possible, I shall avoid the expression of any opinion as to the objective truth or falsehood of the systems of theological speculation of which I may find occasion to speak. From my present point of view, theology is regarded as a natural product of the operations of the human mind, under the conditions of its existence, just as any other branch of science, or the arts of architecture, or music, or painting are such products. Like them, theology has a history. Like them also, it is to be met with in certain simple and rudimentary forms; and these can be connected by a multitude of gradations, which exist or have existed, among people of various ages and races, with the most highly developed theologies of past and present times. ~ Thomas Henry Huxley

Man's passion for truth is such that he will welcome the bitterest of all postulates so long as it strikes him as true. ~ Antonio Machado

Truth is beheld by the intellect which is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the intelligible; beauty is beheld by the imagination which is appeased by the most satisfying relations of the sensible. The first step in the direction of truth is to understand the frame and scope of the intellect itself, to comprehend the act itself of intellection. Aristotle's entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connexion belong to and not belong to the same subject. The first step in the direction of beauty is to understand the frame and scope of the imagination, to comprehend the act itself of esthetic apprehension. ~ James Joyce

Fact, no matter how minutely observed, is truth with a small "t." Big "T" Truth is located behind, beyond, inside, below the surface of things, holding reality together or tearing it apart, and cannot be directly observed. ~ Robert McKee

Abstruse and mystic thoughts you must express With painful care, but seeming easiness; For truth shines brightest thro' the plainest dress. ~ Wentworth Dillon, 4th Earl Of Roscommon

To live forever, die in the service of others. ~ Debasish Mridha

All the worth which the human being possesses, all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State ... For Truth is the unity of the universal and subjective will; and the Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. We have in it, therefore, the object of history in a more definite shape than before; that in which Freedom obtains objectivity. ~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Then many strange people will be philosophers, for the lovers of sights seem to be included, since they take pleasure in learning things. And the lovers of sounds are very strange people to include as philosophers, for they would never willingly attend a serious discussion or spend their time that way, yet they run around to all the Dionysiac festivals, omitting none, whether in cities or villages, as if their ears were under contract to listen to every chorus. Are we to say that these people - and those who learn similar things or petty crafts - are philosophers?

No, but they are like philosophers.

And who are the true philosophers?

Those who love the sight of truth. ~ Plato

Being in darkness and confusion is interesting to me. But behind it you can rise out of that and see things the way the really are. That there is some sort of truth to the whole thing, if you could just get to that point where you could see it, and live it, and feel it ... I think it is a long, long, way off. In the meantime there's suffering and darkness and confusion and absurdities, and it's people kind of going in circles. It's fantastic. It's like a strange carnival: it's a lot of fun, but it's a lot of pain. ~ David Lynch

At times the truth shines so brilliantly that we perceive it as clear as day. Our nature and habit then draw a veil over our perception, and we return to a darkness almost as dense as before. We are like those who, though beholding frequent flashes of lightning, still find themselves in the thickest darkness of the night. ~ Maimonides

When there's a fire in the country, everyone shows up. It's an unwritten rule, a universal rural truth. Helping neighbors fight fire on their land is the ultimate show of support and goodwill, not to mention a clear acknowledgement that prairie fires are no respecters of persons or fence lines and can quickly jump from ranch to ranch, taking nutritive grass, animals, and structures along with it. Plus, while it's probably only a small part, it's an excuse for a bunch of men to get together and, well, fight fire…to gather around a huge inferno and start up the sprayers…to drive around and extinguish flames…to light backfires and try to anticipate changes in the direction of the wind. Men, whether they admit it or not, thrive on that kind of thing. ~ Ree Drummond

What I depend on is a vigorous audience that can discover sweetness and light, beauty and truth, beyond the ability of the artist, on his own, to create them. ~ Orson Scott Card

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Haven't you ever heard the saying that our pasts do not define us?" I countered, growing frustrated. "I screwed up, Hayden. I admitted that. Why can't you let it go?"
"Let it go?" He sneered. "You are the reason my sister is a Program. Please, tell me how I'm supposed to let something like that go? Because I'd love to know."
Footsteps sounded from outside of the holding cell, essentially ending our conversation. I still had much to say to him, but for now, I welcomed the silence.
The silence was much more comforting than the truth. ~ Nicole Sobon

There are occasions when the general belief of the people, even though it be groundless, works its effect as sure as truth itself. ~ Friedrich Schiller