Truth Telling Quotes

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world...would do this, it would change the earth.”
― William Faulkner

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.”
― Franz Kafka

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Living with integrity means: Not settling for less than what you know you deserve in your relationships. Asking for what you want and need from others. Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension. Behaving in ways that are in harmony with your personal values. Making choices based on what you believe, and not what others believe.”
― Barbara De Angelis

“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.”
― Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid

“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

“In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.”
― Czesław Miłosz

“There is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth.”
― Doris May Lessing, Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949

“The duty of youth is to challenge corruption.”
― Kurt Cobain

“If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
― Spencer Johnson

“Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.”
― Warren Wiersbe

“An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it.”
― Howard Zinn

“Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.”
― Joseph Campbell

“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. "One word of truth outweighs the world.”
― Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”
― Galileo Galilei

“Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.”
― James E. Faust

“If an offense come out of the truth, better is it that the offense come than that the truth be concealed.”
― Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles

“Men understand direct communication. It's bitches who speak in code.”
― Kristen Ashley, Knight

“But I suppose the most revolutionary act one can engage in is... to tell the truth.”
― Howard Zinn, Marx in Soho: A Play on History

“It has always been the prerogative of children and half-wits to point out that the emperor has no clothes. But a half-wit remains a half-wit, and the emperor remains an emperor.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

“Proclaim the truth and do not be silent through fear.”
― St. Catherine of Siena

“Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.”
― Robert Brault

“Is it true; is it kind, or is it necessary?”
― Socrates, Essential Thinkers - Socrates

“Never judge someone's character based on the words of another. Instead, study the motives behind the words of the person casting the bad judgment. An honest woman can sell tangerines all day and remain a good person until she dies, but there will always be naysayers who will try to convince you otherwise. Perhaps this woman did not give them something for free, or at a discount. Perhaps too, that she refused to stand with them when they were wrong — or just stood up for something she felt was right. And also, it could be that some bitter women are envious of her, or that she rejected the advances of some very proud men. Always trust your heart. If the Creator stood before a million men with the light of a million lamps, only a few would truly see him because truth is already alive in their hearts. Truth can only be seen by those with truth in them. He who does not have Truth in his heart, will always be blind to her.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.”
― Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams

“Never underestimate the power you have to take your life in a new direction.”
― Germany Kent