Truth Quotes - Page 40

• Much scientific truth proved to be as hypothetical as poetic allegory. The relationshiip of those rod-connected blue and red balls to an actual atomic structure was about the same as the relationship of Christianity to the fish or the Lamb.

  Tom Robbins

  Blue, Balls, Lambs

  4 Copy quote

• No true geologist holds by the development hypothesis;-it has been resigned to sciolists and smatterers;-and there is but one other alternative. They began to be, through the miracle of creation. From the evidence furnished by these rocks we are shut down either to belief in miracle, or to something else infinitely harder of reception, and as thoroughly unsupported by testimony as it is contrary to experience. Hume is at length answered by the severe truths of the stony science.

  Hugh Miller

  Science, Rocks, Miracle

  Hugh Miller, Louis Agassiz (1859). “The Foot-prints of the Creator: Or, The Asterolepis of Stromness”, p.301

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nothing leads the scientist so astray as a premature truth.

  Jean Rostand

  Science, Scientist, Premature

  1939 'Pense es d'un Biologiste', collected inThe Substance of Man (translated by Irma Brandeis,1962).

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of these austerer virtues the love of truth is the chief, and in mathematics, more than elsewhere, the love of truth may find encouragement for waning faith. Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind; and this purpose should be kept always in view throughout the teaching and learning of mathematics.

  Bertrand Russell

  Encouragement, Teaching, Mean

  Bertrand Russell (2015). “Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.45, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• On a huge hill, Cragged, and steep, Truth stands, and hee that will
  Reach her, about must, and about must goo.

  John Donne

  Hills, Steep, Huge

  John Donne, William Blake (1946). “The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Donne: & the Complete Poetry of William Blake”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Remember that [scientific thought] is the guide of action; that the truth which it arrives at is not that which we can ideally contemplate without error, but that which we may act upon without fear; and you cannot fail to see that scientific thought is not an accompaniment or condition of human progress, but human progress itself.

  William Kingdon Clifford

  Science, Errors, Progress

  William Kingdon Clifford, Leslie Stephen, Frederick Pollock (2011). “Lectures and Essays”, p.157, Cambridge University Press

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Science, my boy, is composed of errors, but errors that it is right to make, for they lead step by step to the truth.

  Jules Verne

  Science, Boys, Errors

  Jules Verne (1998). “Journey to the Centre of the Earth”, p.146, Oxford University Press, USA

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientific truth is universal, because it is only discovered by the human brain and not made by it, as art is.

  Konrad Lorenz

  Art, Science, Discovery

  Konrad Lorenz (2002). “On Aggression”, p.279, Psychology Press

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Scientific, like spiritual truth, has ever from the beginning been descending from heaven to man.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Spiritual, Men, Heaven

  Benjamin Disraeli (1875). “Collected Edition of the Novels and Tales”, p.17

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The errors of great men are venerable because they are more fruitful than the truths of little men.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Science, Men, Errors

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.27, Penguin

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them ... It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution solely. The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like.

  John Stuart Mill

  Character, Science, Law

  John Stuart Mill “Principles of Political Economy: Abridged with Critical, Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes and a Sketch of the History of Political Economy”, Library of Alexandria

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

  Francis Bacon

  Science, Errors, Giving

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.29, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The longest tyranny that ever sway'd
  Was that wherein our ancestors betray'd
  Their free-born reason to the Stagirite [Aristotle],
  And made his torch their universal light.
  So truth, while only one suppli'd the state,
  Grew scarce, and dear, and yet sophisticate.

  John Dryden

  Light, Torches, Reason

  John Dryden, John Sargeaunt (1929). “The Poems of John Dryden, Ed., with an Introduction and Textual Notes”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The only truths which are universal are those gross enough to be thought so.

  Paul Valery

  Enough, Gross, Universal

  6 Copy quote

• The truth is, Pavlov's dog trained Pavlov to ring this bell just before the dog salivated.

  George Carlin

  Dog, Pavlov, Bells

  6 Copy quote

• There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

  Francis Bacon

  Fashion, Discovery, Two

  Francis Bacon (2012). “The Great Instauration”, p.30, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are big and little truths, but all belong to the same race.

  Jean Rostand

  Race, Littles, Bigs

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• There are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.

  Bertrand Russell

  Science, Errors, Infinite

  5 Copy quote

• There are moments when very little truth would be enough to shape opinion. One might be hated at extremely low cost.

  Jean Rostand

  Would Be, Cost, Shapes

  Jean Rostand (1962). “The substance of man”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• They decided that all liars should be whipped.
  And a man came along and told them the truth.
  And they hanged him.

  Thomas William Hodgson Crosland

  Liars, Men, Should

  Thomas William Hodgson Crosland (1908). “Little stings”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• To see every day how people get the name 'genius' just as the wood-lice in the cellar the name 'millipede'-not because they have that many feet, but because most people don't want to count to 14-this has had the result that I don't believe anyone any more without checking.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Believe, Science, Names

  4 Copy quote

• Tell the truth so as to puzzle and confound your adversaries.

  Henry Wotton

  Telling The Truth, Puzzles, Adversaries

  "Fiske WordPower: The Exclusive System to Learn, Not Just Memorize, Essential Words". Book by Edward Fiske et al., 2006.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• In general, the more one augments the number of divisions of the productions of nature, the more one approaches the truth, since in nature only individuals exist, while genera, orders, and classes only exist in our imagination.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Order, Class, Numbers

  4 Copy quote

• There are several kinds of truths, and it is customary to place in the first order mathematical truths, which are, however, only truths of definition. These definitions rest upon simple, but abstract, suppositions, and all truths in this category are only constructed, but abstract, consequences of these definitions ... Physical truths, to the contrary, are in no way arbitrary, and do not depend on us.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Simple, Order, Arbitrary

  4 Copy quote

• Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.

  James Russell Lowell

  Men, Bravery, Doubt

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.66

  4 Copy quote

  Show source