Quotes by American Authors - Page 3312

All should be laid open to you without reserve, for there is not a truth existing which I fear, or would wish unknown to the whole world.
Thomas Jefferson
A rumor is a social cancer: it is difficult to contain and it rots the brains of the masses. However, the real danger is that so many people find rumors enjoyable. That part causes the infection. And in such cases when a rumor is only partially made of truth, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where the information may have gone wrong. It is passed on and on until some brave soul questions its validity; that brave soul refuses to bite the apple and let the apple eat him. Forced to start from scratch for the sake of purity and truth, that brave soul, figuratively speaking, fully amputates the information in order to protect his personal judgment. In other words, his ignorance is to be valued more than the lie believed to be true.
Criss Jami
A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.
Byron Katie
The best fiction is far more true than any journalism.
William Faulkner
When everything gets answered, it's fake.
Sean Penn
Don’t talk like that, Dill,” said Aunt Alexandra. “It’s not becoming to a child. It’s – cynical.”“I ain’t cynical, Miss Alexandra. Tellin’ the truth’s not cynical, is it?”“The way you tell it, it is.
Harper Lee
It's not about going around trying to stir up trouble. As long as you're honest and you articulate what you believe to be true, somebody somewhere will become your enemy whether you like it or not.
Criss Jami
How many people long for that "past, simpler, and better world," I wonder, without ever recognizing the truth that perhaps it was they who were simpler and better, and not the world about them?
R.A. Salvatore
Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books.
Ursula K Le Guin
People are always complaining that life's not fair, but that simply isn't true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It's just not centered on you.
Lynn Marie Sager
The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a Parent to care for us, to forgive us our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.
Carl Sagan
Knowledge is a destination. Truth, the journey.
Terry Goodkind
We all know that any emotional bias -- irrespective of truth or falsity -- can be implanted by suggestion in the emotions of the young, hence the inherited traditions of an orthodox community are absolutely without evidential value.... If religion were true, its followers would not try to bludgeon their young into an artificial conformity; but would merely insist on their unbending quest for truth, irrespective of artificial backgrounds or practical consequences. With such an honest and inflexible openness to evidence, they could not fail to receive any real truth which might be manifesting itself around them. The fact that religionists do not follow this honourable course, but cheat at their game by invoking juvenile quasi-hypnosis, is enough to destroy their pretensions in my eyes even if their absurdity were not manifest in every other direction.
H.P. Lovecraft
The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you'll get action.
Malcolm X
There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.
Greta Garbo
Truth is a matter of the imagination.
Ursula K Le Guin
When the time comes to die, make sure that all you have to do is die!
Jim Elliot
Belief can be manipulated. Only knowledge is dangerous.
Frank Herbert
Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- "No, YOU move.
J. Michael Straczynski
What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?The world would split open.
Muriel Rukeyser
The truth will make you odd.
Judy Blume
It has been said, 'the truth will make men free.' The truth alone has never made anyone free. It is only doubt which will bring mental emancipation.
Anton Szandor LaVey
Only yesterday I was no different than them, yet I was saved. I am explaining to you the way of life of a people who say every sort of wicked thing about me because I sacrificed their friendship to gain my own soul. I left the dark paths of their duplicity and turned my eyes toward the light where there is salvation, truth, and justice. They have exiled me now from their society, yet I am content. Mankind only exiles the one whose large spirit rebels against injustice and tyranny. He who does not prefer exile to servility is not free in the true and necessary sense of freedom.
Kahlil Gibran
Knowing the truth is not always a kindness.
Rosamund Hodge
Say not, “I have found the truth,” but rather, “I have found a truth.”Say not, “I have found the path of the soul.” Say rather, “I have met the soul walking upon my path.”For the soul walks upon all paths.The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.
Kahlil Gibran
Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
Orson Scott Card
Macy: “In Truth,” I said, “there are no rules other than you have to tell the truth.”Wes: “How do you win?” he askedMacy: “That,” I said, “is such a boy question.
Sarah Dessen
Never apologize for showing your feelings. When you do, you are apologizing for the truth.
José N Harris
At first, they'll only dislike what you say, but the more correct you start sounding the more they'll dislike you.
Criss Jami
He moved like a dancer, which is not surprising; a horse is a beautiful animal, but it is perhaps most remarkable because it moves as if it always hears music.
Mark Helprin
A boy may be as disagreeable as he pleases, but when a girl refuses to crap sunshine on command, the world mutters darkly about her moods.
Scott Lynch
Some things aren't meant to be known. Only believed.
Mary E. Pearson
Before you enbark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
Sara Shepard
Show me a woman who doesn't feel guilty and I'll show you a man.
Erica Jong
Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.
Khaled Hosseini
In the calculus of feelings, you never really know how one person's absence will affect you more than another's.
Gayle Forman
The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them.
Rachel Maddow
I was in my bed trying to figure out why sometimes you can wake up and go back to sleep and other times you can't
Stephen Chbosky
In the end, Leck should have stuck to his lies. For it was the truth he almost told that killed him.
Kristin Cashore
The truth may not set you free, but used carefully, it can confuse the hell out of your enemies.
Laurell K. Hamilton
One lie has the power to tarnish a thousand truths.
Al David
You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.
Joss Whedon
Lies are neither bad nor good. Like a fire they can either keep you warm or burn you to death, depending on how they're used.
Max Brooks
My bullshit meter is reading that as 'false'.
Charlaine Harris
Most of what I say is complete truth. My edit button is broken.
Myra McEntire
An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.
E.A. Bucchianeri
The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort
Katherine Dunn
I always tell the truth. Even when I lie.
Al Pacino
That sometimes human beings have to just sit in one place and, like, hurt. That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do. That there is such a thing as raw, unalloyed, agendaless kindness. That it is possible to fall asleep during an anxiety attack. That concentrating on anything is very hard work.
David Foster Wallace
You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.
Philip Roth
It's partly true, too, but it isn't all true. People always think something's all true.
J.D. Salinger
The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are goodness, beauty, and truth.
Albert Einstein
Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
Khaled Hosseini
You're so easy to read but the book is boring me.
Emilie Autumn
Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.
Michael Jackson
The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.
Carl Sagan
The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.
Holly Black
Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it's from Neptune.
Noam Chomsky
Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier.
Simone Elkeles
She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallway. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was Dauntless.
Veronica Roth