A small lie is still a lie. And small lies often grow into whoppers. There are many reasons why people lie. And sometimes, we are very keen to validate those reasons because we think it's the best, perhaps least painful option, and we are doing a good deed by hiding the truth. Yet, to cite one of the most famous Buddha quotes, "Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth."
Besides Buddha, many more people have spoken and written about the importance of being truthful and honest. Quotes about the truth highlight many things and reveal great moral lessons. The many truth quotes unveil that among the many ever-changing things, the truth is the only thing that remains unchanged. It's not that the truth can change; perhaps we just never knew what the truth really was.
And although we might not know many things, we should never spread lies or share something we are not sure about as fact. Reading through quotes about truth is really helpful in reminding us that the truth always prevails and that it's just a matter of time until it sees the light of day.
Below, we've gathered quotes on truth and quotes about honesty that will hopefully serve as a reminder to never let lies out of your mouth. Psst, in case you didn't know, there was once a boy whose nose grew very big and heavy from all the lies he was telling. Also, not to scare you off or anything, but the Pinocchio effect is actually a thing...
Do you know any more quotes on honesty and telling the truth? Let us know! P.S. If you are looking for more related content and words of wisdom, check out our recent post sharing quotes about trust!
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"Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either." - Albert Einstein
"Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away." - Elvis Presley
"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." - Benjamin Disraeli
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei
"The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed." - Eminem
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth." - Arthur Conan Doyle
"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth." - Oscar Wilde
"If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - Rene Descartes
"Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving." - James E. Faust
"People will generally accept facts as truth only if the facts agree with what they already believe." - Andy Rooney
"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours." - Hunter S. Thompson
"There are some people so addicted to exaggeration that they can't tell the truth without lying." - Josh Billings
"The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution." - J. K. Rowling
"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." - Norman Schwarzkopf
"The truth always finds it's way out, even years and years and years later. The truth always prevails." - Tyler Hamilton
"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair." - C. S. Lewis
"Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light." - George Washington
"I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant." - H. L. Mencken
"I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." - John F. Kennedy
"Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence." - Henri Frederic Amiel
"It is the nature of truth in general, as of some ores in particular, to be richest when most superficial." - Edgar Allan Poe
"Gossip needn't be false to be evil - there's a lot of truth that shouldn't be passed around." - Frank A. Clark
"For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst and provide for it." - Patrick Henry
"The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it." - Robert H. Schuller
"The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history." - George Orwell
"Truth is confirmed by inspection and delay; falsehood by haste and uncertainty." - Tacitus
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - John Keats
"Truth will always be truth, regardless of lack of understanding, disbelief or ignorance." - W. Clement Stone
"It is always the best policy to speak the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar." - Jerome K. Jerome
"There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself - an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly." - Antisthenes
"All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns." - Bruce Lee
"The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth." - Niels Bohr
"By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we arrive at the truth." - Peter Abelard
"Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't." - Mark Twain
"The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is." - Winston Churchill
"In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same." - Albert Einstein
"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold." - Leo Tolstoy
"The pursuit of truth will set you free; even if you never catch up with it." - Clarence Darrow
"Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant." - Edgar Allan Poe
"Human love has little regard for the truth. It makes the truth relative, since nothing, not even the truth, must come between it and the beloved person." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
"I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it's for or against." - Malcolm X
"Beauty is truth's smile when she beholds her own face in a perfect mirror." - Rabindranath Tagore
"I know where I'm going and I know the truth, and I don't have to be what you want me to be. I'm free to be what I want." - Muhammad Ali
"A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." - Charles Spurgeon
"There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth." - Chanakya
"For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth." - Bo Bennett
"Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine." - Nikola Tesla
"But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be." - Alan Watts
"Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable than fidelity. Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind." - Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Each person does see the world in a different way. There is not a single, unifying, objective truth. We're all limited by our perspective." - Siri Hustvedt
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"We live in a fantasy world, a world of illusion. The great task in life is to find reality." - Iris Murdoch
"I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - Jesus Christ
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts." - Abraham Lincoln
"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people." - Virginia Woolf
"Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth." - Swami Vivekananda
"Some people think that the truth can be hidden with a little cover-up and decoration. But as time goes by, what is true is revealed, and what is fake fades away." - Ismail Haniyeh
"We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter." - Denis Diderot
"The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time." - David Bowie
"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent." - John Calvin
"Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand." - Pablo Picasso
"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness." - Khalil Gibran
"My mother taught me that when you stand in the truth and someone tells a lie about you, don't fight it." - Whitney Houston
"There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth." - Maya Angelou
"There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting." - Buddha
"The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is." - Willa Cather
"It's no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense." - Mark Twain
"Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning." - C. S. Lewis
"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." - Mahatma Gandhi
"The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence." - Rabindranath Tagore
"If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both." - Horace Mann
"Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty." - Stephen King
"The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth." - Chanakya
"Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it." - Tacitus
"Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society." - Thomas Jefferson
"I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's. But behind all of them there is only one truth and that is that there's no truth." - Flannery O'Connor
"In the last few years, the very idea of telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is dredged up only as a final resort when the alternative options of deception, threat and bribery have all been exhausted." - Michael Musto
"Sure I think it is healthy to speak the truth, and be who you are, and be proud of that." - Nathan Lane
"I always felt that a scientist owes the world only one thing, and that is the truth as he sees it." - Hans Eysenck
"Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for." - Bob Marley
"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"The truth is, we all face hardships of some kind, and you never know the struggles a person is going through. Behind every smile, there's a story of a personal struggle." - Adrienne C. Moore
"Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists." - Blaise Pascal
"We learned about honesty and integrity - that the truth matters... that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules... and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square." - Michelle Obama
"Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment." - A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
"There is no better way of exercising the imagination than the study of law. No poet ever interpreted nature as freely as a lawyer interprets the truth." - Jean Giraudoux
"Education is not just about going to school and getting a degree. It's about widening your knowledge and absorbing the truth about life." - Shakuntala Devi
"We don't go into journalism to be popular. It is our job to seek the truth and put constant pressure on our leaders until we get answers." - Helen Thomas
"Honest communication is built on truth and integrity and upon respect of the one for the other." - Benjamin E. Mays
"There really can be no peace without justice. There can be no justice without truth. And there can be no truth, unless someone rises up to tell you the truth." - Louis Farrakhan
"Love is the crowning grace of humanity, the holiest right of the soul, the golden link which binds us to duty and truth, the redeeming principle that chiefly reconciles the heart to life, and is prophetic of eternal good." - Petrarch
"Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames." - Thomas Moore
"Tell me I'm clever, Tell me I'm kind, Tell me I'm talented, Tell me I'm cute, Tell me I'm sensitive, Graceful and wise, Tell me I'm perfect - But tell me the truth." - Shel Silverstein
"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth - and truth rewarded me." - Simone de Beauvoir
"It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realize that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality." - Steven Biko
"Truth gets well if she is run over by a locomotive, while error dies of lockjaw if she scratches her finger." - William Cullen Bryant
"There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, 'Truth is the daughter of Time.'" - Abraham Lincoln
"Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true." - Swami Vivekananda
"Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning." - Anais Nin
"We are either in the process of resisting God's truth or in the process of being shaped and molded by his truth." - Charles Stanley
"All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses." - Friedrich Nietzsche
"Although humans see reality in colour, for me, black and white has always been connected to the image's deeper truth, to its most hidden meaning." - Peter Lindbergh
"One of the reasons people hate politics is that truth is rarely a politician's objective. Election and power are." - Cal Thomas
"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight." - Khalil Gibran
"A great man does not seek applause or place; he seeks for truth; he seeks the road to happiness, and what he ascertains, he gives to others." - Robert Green Ingersoll
"Truth is the ultimate power. When the truth comes around, all the lies have to run and hide." - Ice Cube
"The great advantage about telling the truth is that nobody ever believes it." - Dorothy L. Sayers
"Every truth has two sides; it is as well to look at both, before we commit ourselves to either." - Aesop
"Scientific truth is marvelous, but moral truth is divine and whoever breathes its air and walks by its light has found the lost paradise." - Horace Mann
"What is truth? Truth doesn't really exist. Who is going to judge whether my experience of an incident is more valid than yours? No one can be trusted to be the judge of that." - Tracey Emin
3 rules to live by...Dont lie, don't steal, and if you eff up, own it.
3 rules to live by...Dont lie, don't steal, and if you eff up, own it.