Truism Quotes

• It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Inspirational, Life, War

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Revolt in 2100”, p.124, Hachette UK

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• It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creeds into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Law, Political, Mind

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• Everybody wants peace. That's a truism. There is no point in accomplishing through war what you can accomplish through peace.

  Norman Finkelstein

  War, Want, Accomplish

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• And it has become a kind of a truism in the study of creativity that you can't be creating anything with less than 10 years of technical knowledge immersion in a particular field.

  Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

  Creativity, Years, Creating

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  The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.

  Lily Tomlin

  Inspirational, Funny, Meaningful

  Quoted in People, 26 Dec. 1977. Although now associated with Tomlin, this saying appears anonymously in Robert Reisner, Graffiti (1971), in the form "Remember, even if you win the rat race - you're still a rat." Rosalie Maggio, in New Beacon Book of Quotations by Women, states that William Sloane Coffin said "Even if you win the rat-race, you're still a rat" as a chaplain at Williams College or Yale University in the 1950s or 1960s.

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• I've never had a problem with the old truism about dancing to architecture. I think you can dance to architecture. There's some pretty funky architecture to dance to.

  Rob Chapman

  Thinking, Dancing, Architecture

  "ROB CHAPMAN (author of “A VERY IRREGULAR HEAD: THE LIFE OF SYD BARRETT”)". Revolt Of The Apes Interview, revoltoftheapes.com. January 25, 2011.

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• Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.

  George Orwell

  Gun, Men, Bully

  George Orwell, Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus (1968). “The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: An age like this, 1920-1940”, Harvill Secker

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• It's a familiar truism that at any one moment, financial markets are dominated by either fear or greed. But the healthiest markets are those that are animated by both fear and greed at the same time.

  James Surowiecki

  Fear, Greed, Financial

  James Surowiecki (2005). “The Wisdom of Crowds”, p.241, Anchor

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• Avarice, greed, concupiscence and so forth are all based on the mathematical truism that the more you get, the more you have. The remark of that it is more blessed to give than to receive is based on the human truth that the more you give away in love, the more you are. It is not just for the sake of other people that tells us to give rather than get, but for our own sakes too.

  Frederick Buechner

  Blessed, People, Giving

  FaceBook post by Frederick Buechner from Mar 27, 2014

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• If at first you don't succeed, try management.

  Stephen Hawking

  Success, Perseverance, Persistence

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• If at first you don't succeed, try hard work.

  William Feather

  Success, Perseverance, Hard Work

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• It is a general truism of this world that anything long divided will surely unite, and anything long united will surely divide.

  Luo Guanzhong

  Long, World, United

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• You know, it's a truism that writers for children must still be children themselves, deep down, must still feel childish feelings, and a child's surprise at the world.

  A. S. Byatt

  Children, Feelings, World

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• Is religion a force for good? The evidence of history and the evidence of current events cast doubt on the truism.

  James A. Haught

  Religious, Evil, Doubt

  James A. Haught (1990). “Holy horrors: an illustrated history of religious murder and madness”

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• It's a truism that denials never quite catch up with charges. Honest journalists who may have mistakenly printed false information know that the most prominent retraction never quite undoes the damage done by the original publication.

  Tom Wicker

  May, Information, Never Quit

  "IN THE NATION; Lesson of Lattimore" by Tom Wicker, www.nytimes.com. June 9, 1989.

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• The [tenth] amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered.

  Harlan F. Stone

  Rights, States, Amendments

  United States v. Darby Lumber Company, 312 U.S. 100, (124), 1941.

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• cliches are truisms and all truisms are true

  Jack Kerouac

  Cliche

  Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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• If at first you don't succeed, try, try, try again.

  William Edward Hickson

  Inspirational, Success, Perseverance

  "Try and Try Again". Poem by William Edward Hickson,

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• The new school of art and thought does indeed wear an air of audacity, and breaks out everywhere into blasphemies, as if it required any courage to say a blasphemy. There is only one thing that it requires real courage to say, and that is a truism.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Courage, Art, Real

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• It is the simple truth that man does differ from the brutes in kind and not in degree; and the proof of it is here; that it sounds like a truism to say that the most primitive man drew a picture of a monkey and that it sounds like a joke to say that the most intelligent monkey drew a picture of a man. Something of division and disproportion has appeared; and it is unique. Art is the signature of man.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Intelligent, Unique

  "The Everlasting Man". Book by Gilbert K. Chesterton, Part I: On the Creature Called Man, 1925.

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• The theory of truth is a series of truisms.

  J. L. Austin

  Truth, Theory, Series

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• It was a truism that all civilizations were basically neurotic until they made contact with everybody else and found their place within the ever-changing meta-civilisation of other beings, because, until then, during the stage when they honestly believed they might be entirely alone in existence, all solo societies were possessed of both an inflated sense of their own importance and a kind of existential terror at the sheer scale and apparent emptiness of the universe.

  Iain Banks

  Civilization, Might, Emptiness

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• It is, of course, the merest truism to say a party is of use only so far as it serves the nation.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Party, Use, Politics

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• The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.

  David Bowie

  Philosophy, Lying, Cutting

  David Bowie (2016). “David Bowie: The Last Interview”, p.49, Melville House

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• It is a truism, of course, that in "democratic" states the populace must be encouraged to imagine that it makes important decisions by voting, and must therefore be controlled by suitable propaganda, which implants ideas to which the voters respond as automatically as trained animals respond to words of command in a circus, thus leaving to the masses only a factitious choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee on the basis of their preference for a certain kind of oratory, a hair-style, or a particular facial expression.

  Revilo P. Oliver

  Animal, Expression, Ideas

  "Revised Historiography". "Liberty Bell" Magazine, April 1980.

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