This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The truth of God has to run the gauntlet of all other truths. It is on trial by them and they on trial by it. Our final opinion about God can be settled only after all the truths have straightened themselves out together." - William James
"Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment… I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because, when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson
"Our fortunes and lives seem chaotic when they are looked at as facts. There is order and meaning only in the great truths believed by everybody in that older wiser time of the world when things were less well known but better understood." - Roderick MacLeish
"The average man who goes wrong in belief does it when he forgets that there are other truths besides his favorite one." - Cleland Boyd McAfee
"The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated." - Hu Shih, born Hu Hung-hsing
"There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies." - Raoul Vaneigem
"Man never rises to great truths without enthusiasm." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"It is easy to be honest enough not to be hanged. To be really honest means to subdue one’s prepossessions, ideals - stating things fairly, not humoring your argument - doing justice to your enemies... making confession whether you can afford it or not; refusing unmerited praise; looking painful truths in the face." - Aubrey de Vere, fully Aubrey Albericus de Vere NULL
"There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn
"The cruelest lies are often told without a word; The kindest truths are often spoken, never heard." - Ben Folds, fully Benjamin Scott "Ben" Folds
"What we call basic truths are simply the ones we discover after all the others." - Albert Camus
"Yet the deepest truths are best read between the lines, and, for the most part, refuse to be written." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Only a small mind traffics in scorn; a mind whose truth accords no place to others’. But we who knew that different truths can coexist thought not that we were lowering ourselves by countenancing another’s truth, unpalatable though it might seem." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Mythology… is an intuitive form of apprehending and expressing universal truths." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths as to root out old errors, for there is this paradox in men: they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old... A truth that is merely acquired from others only clings to us as a limb added to the body, or as a false tooth, or a wax nose. A truth we have acquired by our own mental exertions, is like our natural limbs, which really belong to us. This is exactly the difference between an original thinker and the mere learned man." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"The very truths which concern us most can only be half spoken, but with attention we can grasp the whole meaning." - Baltasar Gracián
"It is not so difficult a task to plant new truths as to root out old errors; for there is this paradox in men - they run after that which is new, but are prejudiced in favor of that which is old." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Most of the grand truths of God have to be learned by trouble; they must be burned into us by the hot iron of affliction, otherwise we shall not truly receive them." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon
"We live in the present, we dream of the future, but we learn eternal truths from the past." - Chiang Kai-shek
"Great truths do not take hold of the hearts of the masses." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"Life hands us lessons, universal truths teaching us the basics about love, fear, time, power, loss, happiness, relationships, (guilt, anger, forgiveness, surrender, patience, play, loss) and authenticity. We are not unhappy today because of the complexities of life. We are unhappy because we miss its underlying simplicities." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"The simplest truths often meet the sternest resistance and are slowest in getting general acceptance." - Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." - Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
"Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open his eyes to see them. Such I take this important one to be, viz., that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a world all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have no existence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit - it being perfectly unintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any single part of them an existence independent of a spirit." - George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
"All great truths began as blasphemies." - George Bernard Shaw
"Each child’s mind [should go] through a process like that which the mind of humanity at large has gone through. The truths of number, of form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to let him learn them as the race learned them." - Herbert Spencer
"It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people ... The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge." - Horace Mann
"The greatest truths are the simplest." - Hosea Ballou
"This is a very important thing to keep in mind: all movements look small and hopeless at the beginning, but they grow because they appeal to people's sensibilities. They concentrate on such simple truths that people understand." - Howard Zinn
"There are truths which some men despise because they have not examined, and which they will not examine because they despise. There is one signal instance on record where this kind of prejudice was overcome by a miracle; but the age of miracles is past, while that of prejudice remains." - James Bryant Conant
"Fiction reveals truths that reality obscures." - Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West
"I believe in the immortality of the soul, not in the sense in which I accept the demonstrable truths of science, but as a supreme act of faith in the reasonableness of God’s work." - John Fiske
"When power leads people towards arrogance, poetry reminds them of their limitations. When power narrows the areas of people's concern, poetry reminds them of the richness and diversity of their existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstone of our judgment." -
"The truths of nature are one eternal change, one infinite variety. There is no bush on the face of the globe exactly like another bush; there are no two trees in the forest whose boughs bend into the same network, nor two leaves on the same tree which could not be told one form the other, nor two waves in the sea exactly alike." - John Ruskin
"[The simplest and most necessary truths are always the last believed." - John Ruskin
"The test of real and vigorous thinking, the thinking which ascertains truths instead of dreaming dreams, is successful application to practice. Where that purpose does not exist, to give definiteness, precision, and an intelligible meaning to thought, it generates nothing better than the mystical metaphysics of the Pythagoreans or the Vedas." - John Stuart Mill
"To be an atheist requires an infinitely greater measure of faith than to receive all the great truths which atheism would deny." - Joseph Addison
"There are no new truths, but only truths that have not been recognized by those who have perceived them without noticing. A truth is something that everyone can be shown to know and to have known, as people say, all along." - Mary McCarthy
"No matter how much we strive to understand, ultimate reality will always remain hidden? Only if the search for truth is motivated by the desire to reach an absolute answer. The person looking for certainty is bound to be disappointed... If on the other hand we realize that the partial truths we uncover are all legitimate aspects of the unknowable universe, then we can learn to enjoy the search and derive from it the pleasure one gets from any creative act... One must painstakingly match one’s preconceptions against actual, ongoing experience to begin separating truth from illusion." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Life is seething before your eyes; corner stands collapse, illusions evaporate, truths come tottering like bombs, elements disintegrate demanding new components, new vices destroy the walls of muteness and rise, species amalgamate, forces are set free from their hiding places, and conscience asks its possessor to take a stand; Hold on… escape… live… die… complicate yourself… renew yourself… There is no other way than to wade into the waves of darkness and to swim to the shore of light." - Naguib Mahfouz
"The greatest and highest truths have no outward image of themselves visible to man, which he who wishes to satisfy the soul of the inquirer can adapt to the eye of sense, and therefore we ought to train ourselves to give and accept a rational account of them; for immaterial things, which are the noblest and greatest, are shown only in thought and idea, and in no other way." - Plato NULL
"To one who pays attention to God’s immensity, it is clear that nothing at all can exist which does not depend on Him. This is true not only of everything that subsists, but of all order, of every law, and of every reason of truth and goodness... Hence, neither should we think that eternal truths depend upon the human understanding or on other existing things; they must depend on God alone, who as the supreme legislator, ordained them from all eternity." - René Descartes
"Revealed truths are above our intelligence, and I would not dare submit them to the feebleness of my reason." - René Descartes
"Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." - Robert Frost
"Why abandon a belief merely because it ceases to be true? Cling to it long enough and it will turn true again, for so it goes. Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor." - Robert Frost