Wise Words on Truth
"I'm Still Here"
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Philip K. Dick
"Face The Facts"
Facts are facts and flinch not.
Robert Browning
"Accept No Substitutes"
The truth is one thing for which there is no substitute.
Unknown
"The Terrible Cost of Looking The Other Way"
Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and the more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
Aldous Huxley
"Suppress Not The Truth"
A scientific or a rationally valid statement means that the power of reason is applied to all the available data of observation without any of them being suppressed or falsified for the sake of a desired result.
Erich Fromm
The god whom I adore is not the God of darkness. He has not given me understanding in order to forbid me to use it; to tell me to [surrender] my reason is to insult the giver of reason.
Rousseau
"But Is It Reality?"
A belief is not true because it is useful.
Henri Amiel
"If you add to the truth, you subtract from it."
The Talmud
"Truth's Enemies: Cowardice, Laziness, Arrogance"
From the cowardice that dare not face new truth
From the laziness that is contented with half truth
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Good Lord, deliver me.
A Prayer From Kenya
"Ridiculing Truth"
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
“Stumbling Over The Truth”
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened
Sir Winston Churchill
"Look Who's Talking"
If evil Men speak good, or good Men evil of thee; examine thy Actions, and suspect thyself.
Thomas Fuller
"Obstructed By Illusion"
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
"Truth Is True"
Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it—deeply and gloriously—because it is true. It is not simply ‘true for us’; it is true for any who seek in order to find, because truth is true even if nobody believes it and falsehood is false even if everyone believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity—it is simply true and that is the end of it.
Os Guinness
" Chronological snobbery is..."
...the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
C.S. Lewis
"Right is Right
"Right is right. Even if everyone is against it: and wrong is wrong. Even if everyone is for it."
William Penn
"Neither Whining Nor Criticism Changes Truth"
Two and two the mathematician continues to make four; in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five
James McNeill Whistler
"Progress = Rejecting Falsehood"
Very much of what we call the progress of today consists in getting rid of false ideas, false conceptions of things, and in taking a point of view that enables us to see the principles, ideas, and things in right relation to each other.
William Hoard
"The Poison of Subjectivism"
The modern mind has two lines of defense...The second claims that to tie ourselves to an immutable moral code is to cut off all progress and acquiesce in 'stagnation'...Let us strip it of legitimate emotional power it derives from the word 'stagnation' with its suggestion of puddles and mantled pools. If water stands too long it stinks. To infer thence that whatever stands long must be unwholesome is to be the victim of metaphor. Space does not stink because it has preserved its three dimensions from the beginning. The square on the hypotenuse has not gone [moldy] by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love is not dishonored by constancy...For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the descriptive term 'permanent'. Does a permanent moral standard preclude progress? On the contrary except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the [terminal] is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress toward it? Our ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either for the better or the worse if there is no absolute and immutable good to which they can approximate or from which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum more and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right answer is 'stagnant.'
C.S. Lewis
"Waste Not Your Life in The Grasslands of Existentialism"
All that looks like reality to us is dependent on God. There is creation and Creator, nothing more. And creation gets all its meaning and purpose from God. Here [Francis Shaffer's 'The God Who Is There'] was an absolutely compelling road sign. Stay on the road of objective truth. This will be the way to avoid wasting your life. Stay on the road that your fiery evangelist father was on...Here was weighty intellectual confirmation that life would be wasted in the grassland of existentialism. Stay on the road. There is Truth. There is Point and Purpose and Essence to it all.
John Piper
"Truth: The Grand Instrument"
The grand instrument for forwarding the improvement of the mind is the publication of truth.
William Godwin
"Tell Yourself The Truth"
Self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally more and more.
Thomas Carlyle
"Truth: The Refuge of the Strong"
Self-deceit-the refuge of the weak.
Louis de Caulaincourt
"Wish For Truth"
Nothing is as easy as deceiving yourself, for what you wish you readily believe.
Demosthenes
“Accepting Truth Prevents Self-Destruction”
Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt. Forest fires burn out deadwood and return trapped elements to the soil. Sometimes, however, fires are suppressed, artificially. That does not stop the deadwood from accumulating. Sooner or later, a fire will start. When it does, it will burn so hot that everything will be destroyed—even the soil in which the forest grows. The prideful, rational mind, comfortable with its certainty, enamoured of its own brilliance, is easily tempted to ignore error, and to sweep dirt under the rug...Sigmund Freud, for his part, analogously believed that “repression” contributed in a non-trivial manner to the development of mental illness (and the difference between repression of truth and a lie is a matter of degree, not kind). Alfred Adler knew it was lies that bred sickness. C.G. Jung knew that moral problems plagued his patients, and that such problems were caused by untruth. All these thinkers, all centrally concerned with pathology both individual and cultural, came to the same conclusion: lies warp the structure of Being. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other…We can deceive ourselves and others into believing and acting as if things are other than we know they are. And why not lie? Why not twist and distort things to obtain a small gain, or to smooth things over, or to keep the peace, or to avoid hurt feelings? Reality has its terrible aspect: do we really need to confront its snake-headed face in every moment of our waking consciousness, and at every turn in our lives? Why not turn away, at least, when looking is simply too painful? The reason is simple. Things fall apart.
We can open our eyes and modify what we have where necessary and keep the machinery running smoothly. Or we can pretend that everything is alright, fail to make the necessary repairs, and then curse fate when nothing goes our way...When the lies get big enough, the whole world spoils. But if you look close enough, the biggest of lies is composed of smaller lies, and those are composed of still smaller lies...
To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness. See the truth. Tell the truth.
If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.
Jordan Peterson
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.
Philip K. Dick
"Face The Facts"
Facts are facts and flinch not.
Robert Browning
"Accept No Substitutes"
The truth is one thing for which there is no substitute.
Unknown
"The Terrible Cost of Looking The Other Way"
Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and the more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.
Aldous Huxley
"Suppress Not The Truth"
A scientific or a rationally valid statement means that the power of reason is applied to all the available data of observation without any of them being suppressed or falsified for the sake of a desired result.
Erich Fromm
The god whom I adore is not the God of darkness. He has not given me understanding in order to forbid me to use it; to tell me to [surrender] my reason is to insult the giver of reason.
Rousseau
"But Is It Reality?"
A belief is not true because it is useful.
Henri Amiel
"If you add to the truth, you subtract from it."
The Talmud
"Truth's Enemies: Cowardice, Laziness, Arrogance"
From the cowardice that dare not face new truth
From the laziness that is contented with half truth
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
Good Lord, deliver me.
A Prayer From Kenya
"Ridiculing Truth"
Nothing has more retarded the advancement of learning than the disposition of vulgar minds to ridicule and vilify what they cannot comprehend.
Samuel Johnson
“Stumbling Over The Truth”
Men stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing happened
Sir Winston Churchill
"Look Who's Talking"
If evil Men speak good, or good Men evil of thee; examine thy Actions, and suspect thyself.
Thomas Fuller
"Obstructed By Illusion"
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
"Truth Is True"
Christian faith is not true because it works; it works because it is true. It is not true because we experience it; we experience it—deeply and gloriously—because it is true. It is not simply ‘true for us’; it is true for any who seek in order to find, because truth is true even if nobody believes it and falsehood is false even if everyone believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity—it is simply true and that is the end of it.
Os Guinness
" Chronological snobbery is..."
...the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited. You must find why it went out of date. Was it ever refuted (and if so by whom, where, and how conclusively) or did it merely die away as fashions do? If the latter, this tells us nothing about its truth or falsehood. From seeing this, one passes to the realization that our own age is also "a period," and certainly has, like all periods, its own characteristic illusions. They are likeliest to lurk in those widespread assumptions which are so ingrained in the age that no one dares to attack or feels it necessary to defend them.
C.S. Lewis
"Right is Right
"Right is right. Even if everyone is against it: and wrong is wrong. Even if everyone is for it."
William Penn
"Neither Whining Nor Criticism Changes Truth"
Two and two the mathematician continues to make four; in spite of the whine of the amateur for three, or the cry of the critic for five
James McNeill Whistler
"Progress = Rejecting Falsehood"
Very much of what we call the progress of today consists in getting rid of false ideas, false conceptions of things, and in taking a point of view that enables us to see the principles, ideas, and things in right relation to each other.
William Hoard
"The Poison of Subjectivism"
The modern mind has two lines of defense...The second claims that to tie ourselves to an immutable moral code is to cut off all progress and acquiesce in 'stagnation'...Let us strip it of legitimate emotional power it derives from the word 'stagnation' with its suggestion of puddles and mantled pools. If water stands too long it stinks. To infer thence that whatever stands long must be unwholesome is to be the victim of metaphor. Space does not stink because it has preserved its three dimensions from the beginning. The square on the hypotenuse has not gone [moldy] by continuing to equal the sum of the squares on the other two sides. Love is not dishonored by constancy...For the emotive term 'stagnant' let us substitute the descriptive term 'permanent'. Does a permanent moral standard preclude progress? On the contrary except on the supposition of a changeless standard, progress is impossible. If good is a fixed point, it is at least possible that we should get nearer and nearer to it; but if the [terminal] is as mobile as the train, how can the train progress toward it? Our ideas of the good may change, but they cannot change either for the better or the worse if there is no absolute and immutable good to which they can approximate or from which they can recede. We can go on getting a sum more and more nearly right only if the one perfectly right answer is 'stagnant.'
C.S. Lewis
"Waste Not Your Life in The Grasslands of Existentialism"
All that looks like reality to us is dependent on God. There is creation and Creator, nothing more. And creation gets all its meaning and purpose from God. Here [Francis Shaffer's 'The God Who Is There'] was an absolutely compelling road sign. Stay on the road of objective truth. This will be the way to avoid wasting your life. Stay on the road that your fiery evangelist father was on...Here was weighty intellectual confirmation that life would be wasted in the grassland of existentialism. Stay on the road. There is Truth. There is Point and Purpose and Essence to it all.
John Piper
"Truth: The Grand Instrument"
The grand instrument for forwarding the improvement of the mind is the publication of truth.
William Godwin
"Tell Yourself The Truth"
Self-deception once yielded to, all other deceptions follow naturally more and more.
Thomas Carlyle
"Truth: The Refuge of the Strong"
Self-deceit-the refuge of the weak.
Louis de Caulaincourt
"Wish For Truth"
Nothing is as easy as deceiving yourself, for what you wish you readily believe.
Demosthenes
“Accepting Truth Prevents Self-Destruction”
Error necessitates sacrifice to correct it, and serious error necessitates serious sacrifice. To accept the truth means to sacrifice—and if you have rejected the truth for a long time, then you’ve run up a dangerously large sacrificial debt. Forest fires burn out deadwood and return trapped elements to the soil. Sometimes, however, fires are suppressed, artificially. That does not stop the deadwood from accumulating. Sooner or later, a fire will start. When it does, it will burn so hot that everything will be destroyed—even the soil in which the forest grows. The prideful, rational mind, comfortable with its certainty, enamoured of its own brilliance, is easily tempted to ignore error, and to sweep dirt under the rug...Sigmund Freud, for his part, analogously believed that “repression” contributed in a non-trivial manner to the development of mental illness (and the difference between repression of truth and a lie is a matter of degree, not kind). Alfred Adler knew it was lies that bred sickness. C.G. Jung knew that moral problems plagued his patients, and that such problems were caused by untruth. All these thinkers, all centrally concerned with pathology both individual and cultural, came to the same conclusion: lies warp the structure of Being. Untruth corrupts the soul and the state alike, and one form of corruption feeds the other…We can deceive ourselves and others into believing and acting as if things are other than we know they are. And why not lie? Why not twist and distort things to obtain a small gain, or to smooth things over, or to keep the peace, or to avoid hurt feelings? Reality has its terrible aspect: do we really need to confront its snake-headed face in every moment of our waking consciousness, and at every turn in our lives? Why not turn away, at least, when looking is simply too painful? The reason is simple. Things fall apart.
We can open our eyes and modify what we have where necessary and keep the machinery running smoothly. Or we can pretend that everything is alright, fail to make the necessary repairs, and then curse fate when nothing goes our way...When the lies get big enough, the whole world spoils. But if you look close enough, the biggest of lies is composed of smaller lies, and those are composed of still smaller lies...
To tell the truth is to bring the most habitable reality into Being. Truth builds edifices that can stand a thousand years. Truth feeds and clothes the poor, and makes nations wealthy and safe. Truth reduces the terrible complexity of a man to the simplicity of his word, so that he can become a partner, rather than an enemy. Truth makes the past truly past, and makes the best use of the future’s possibilities. Truth is the ultimate, inexhaustible natural resource. It’s the light in the darkness. See the truth. Tell the truth.
If your life is not what it could be, try telling the truth. If you cling desperately to an ideology, or wallow in nihilism, try telling the truth. If you feel weak and rejected, and desperate, and confused, try telling the truth. In Paradise, everyone speaks the truth. That is what makes it Paradise.
Jordan Peterson