Truth
“It's only important if you want to get things right.”
Philosophers and political leaders -- serious and wise people -- have felt the need to say serious and wise things about “The Truth.” Their important reminders emphasize these three themes.
(1) For adults, courageously facing a truth is the necessary prelude to the most significant self improvement.
(2) Truths persist independent of human desire.
(3) Truths establish this objective reality. Humans choose to live in a society requiring reasonable honest cooperation from everyone.
(1) “To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.”
(2) “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”
Tom Paine:
(2) “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.”
(3) “A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all...”
(3) “Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich... All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilization, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”***
(1) “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
(3) “Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.”
(3) “Lying has always been a highly approved Nazi technique.”
(2+3) “Truth itself is beyond all human authority.”
Penn Jillette:
(3+2) “[Y]ou cannot have community, you cannot have love unless you have a shared reality. And anything that comes from within, any revelation that comes from within by definition can't be shared. So what science did for us mostly was science gave us a reality that we could share and talk about. So if I feel the presence of my dead mother with me that's personal; that's poetic. But if I'm going to actually talk about what death means we have to go with things that we've proven. And proof has been given such a hard cold kind of connotation; whereas another way to say proof is just something you can share. It's another way to say love! If I believe there's a God in the universe and I can't prove it, I have said nothing to the community. If I think there's such a thing as black holes and I can give some evidence to that, that's a way of showing love for other people.”
(1+3) “The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing.”
(3) “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.”
(3) “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
(3) “Let us have faith that right makes might...”
(3) “Here, Right Matters.”
(3) “Integrity Counts.”
(3) “The supreme quality for a leader is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible...”
(1+3) “I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.”
(2) “Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.”
(1+3) “When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, ...he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.”