On Life, Truth & Philosophy

Quotes and Facts

Habit, custom and tradition are stronger than the truth.
Voltaire

Don't be afraid if the entire mob cries out.
Nothing in this world is as hated and feared as the truth.
Theodor Fontane (1819–1898), German novelist and poet

A truth can begin to take effect when the recipient is ready, not before.
Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914), German author and poet

"For, he reasons pointedly
That which must not, can not be."
Christian Morgenstern on "Impossible Facts"

Most people are more scared of a truth than a lie.
Ernst Ferstl, Austrian teacher and writer

No one is further from the truth than the one who knows all the answers.
Zhuangzi, ancient Chinese text

The smarter one gives in! A sad truth which establishes the domination of ignorance in the world..
Baroness Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (1830–1916), Austrian writer

He who never retracts his opinion has greater love for himself than for the truth.
Joseph Joubert (1754–1824), French moralist and essayist

A man who doesn't know the truth is just a dunce
but a man who knows the truth and calls it a lie is a felon.
Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956), German poet, playwright, and theatre director

Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.
George Bernard Shaw

Truth is a repugnant medicine: one prefers staying sick rather than deciding to take it.
August von Kotzebue (1761–1819), German dramatist and writer

Nothing is easier than self-delusion, for what we want to be true, we think to be true.
Demosthenes (384–322 BC), Greek statesman and orator

While a half-empty glass is also half full, half a lie in no way is half a truth.
Jean Cocteau

Learnedness kills wisdom — one of the few facts which are both sad and true.
paraphrasing Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936), British writer

The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.
Oswald Spengler

It has been the fate of all bold adventurers and reformers to be esteemed insane.
G.B. Cheever

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Aldous Huxley

Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Thomas Huxley

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

The bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.
Hermann Hesse

Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by naiveté. People are all-to-ready to believe lies that make them feel morally or intellectually superior.
Ed Friedlander, M.D.

Creeds and doctrines are like a raft to carry one to the other shore, and then to relinquish. Neither cling to the raft forever, nor reject it when drowning. Even better, become a strong swimmer.
Diamond Sutra

Science always has effects, but they are opposing effects one that is destructive and one that is constructive. Science ruled by the intellect will splinter the view of the world into a chaos of details, losing connection to the Whole in the process.

Science ruled by spirit, however, turns into wisdom, since it will be deeply moved by the wondrous overall scheme of things and feel respect and awe for the great mind felt to be at work behind it. Such is the difference between learnedness and wisdom.
Max Bircher-Benner, MD, translated by Healing Cancer Naturally

All the world is a Stage. And all the men and women merely players.
William Shakespeare, As You Like It

The greatest achievements of mankind have been accomplished by two types of men, those who were smart enough to know it could be done, and those too dumb to know it couldn't.
Anonymous

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents...but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Max Planck

Human progress has never been achieved with unanimous consent. Those who were enlightened first are compelled to pursue the light in spite of others.
Christopher Columbus

The jury is composed of the old guard who, as history teaches us, have a vested interest in protecting the status quo, no matter the cost in human lives.
Robert Barefoot

In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future.
Eric Hoffer, philosopher

...what is 'true', really? What is evidence? A self-reinforcing reflection based on what you most likely believe to be true already... One person can see so much evidence for something, and another will say there is none. There really is no empirical evidence. There is evidence for everything being true and evidence for nothing being true. The degree to which we perceive evidence for anything is all about our orientation, period.
Bashar (Darryl Anka)

...if one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar’s livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work?

A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course — but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others.

He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout — in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering.

I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him. ... He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.
George Orwell: 'Down and Out in Paris and London'

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can't help them, at least don't hurt them.
Dalai Lama

The things that will destroy us are: politics without principle; pleasure without conscience; wealth without work; knowledge without character; business without morality; science without humanity; and worship without sacrifice.
Mahatma Gandhi

I believe all suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction. Yet true happiness comes from a sense of peace and contentment, which in turn must be achieved through the cultivation of altruism, of love and compassion, and elimination of ignorance, selfishness, and greed.
Dalai Lama

Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person, my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.
Thomas Paine

Innovation is a two-fold threat to the scientific hierarchy. First it threatens their oracle authority. Secondly, it evokes the deeper fear that their whole laboriously constructed authoritarian edifice may collapse
Arthur Koestler

We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.
Aesop

Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said: 'War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away'.
Immanuel Kant

If a war be undertaken for the most righteous end, before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has NO defense,... it is a national crime.
Charles Eliot Norton

Vegetarian food leaves a deep impression on our nature. If the whole world adopts vegetarianism, it can change the destiny of humankind.
Albert Einstein

Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular,... but one must take it simply because it is right.
Martin Luther King, Jr

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did NOTHING because he could only do a little.
Edmund Burke

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God's service when it is violating all his laws.
President John Adams

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider God-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.
Aristotle

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948), Indian political and spiritual leader

To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that the one that must be loved is not a friend.
Gandhi

Hatred ever kills, love never dies; such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.
Gandhi

Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
Gandhi

Democracy and violence can ill go together. Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
Gandhi

I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit, not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.
Albert Einstein

Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty.
Gandhi

He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.
Gandhi

You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Jesus Christ

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
Gandhi

It is better to be divided by truth than to be united in error. It is better to speak the truth that hurts and then heals, than falsehood that comforts and then kills. It is better to be hated for telling the truth, than to be loved for telling a lie.

It’s better to stand alone with the truth, than to be wrong with a multitude. It is better to ultimately succeed with the truth than to temporarily succeed with a lie.
Adrian Rogers

It may be long before the law of love will be recognized in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
Gandhi

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On Life, Truth & Philosophy

Quotes and Facts

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