Whole Truth Quotes - Page 2

• Since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinion that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

  John Stuart Mill

  Healing, Chance, Opinion

  John Stuart Mill (1989). “J. S. Mill: 'On Liberty' and Other Writings”, p.53, Cambridge University Press

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• Your duty is to be, and not to be this or that. I Am That I Am sums up the whole truth; the method is summarized in Be Still.

  Ramana Maharshi

  Meditation Practice, Self Realization, Method

  Ramana Maharshi (2004). “The Spiritual Teaching of Ramana Maharshi”, p.86, Shambhala Publications

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• Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Law, Littles, Mystery

  Dorothy L. Sayers (2013). “The Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries: Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, and Unnatural Death”, p.317, Open Road Media

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• If you think somebody is telling a big lie about you, the only way to answer is with the whole truth.

  Harry S. Truman

  Lying, Thinking, Answers

  1950 On Senator Joseph R McCarthy. Quoted in John Hersey Aspects of the Presidency (1980).

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• Speech is not a means in the service of an external end. It contains its own rule of usage, ethics, and view of the world, as a gesture sometimes bears the whole truth about a man.

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty

  Mean, Men, Views

  Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1964). “Signs”, p.77, Northwestern University Press

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• Pressure, no doubt, has always been a most important factor in the metamorphism of rocks; but there is, I think, at present some danger in over-estimating this, and representing a partial statement of truth as the whole truth. Geology, like many human beings, suffered from convulsions in its infancy; now, in its later years, I apprehend an attack of pressure on the brain.

  Thomas George Bonney

  Science, Thinking, Rocks

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• The interests of society often render it expedient not to utter the whole truth, the interests of science never: for in this field we have much more to fear from the deficiency of truth than from its abundance.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Truth, Fear, Fields

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”

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• If we could see the whole truth of any situation, our only response would be one of compassion.

  Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

  Compassion, Would Be, Situation

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• Do not praise your own faith exclusively so that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this you will miss much good. Nay, you will miss the whole truth of the matter. God, the Omniscient and the Omnipresent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for He says in the Quran, wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah. Everybody praises what he knows. His God is his own creature, and in praising it, he praises himself. Which he would not do if he were just, for his dislike is based on ignorance.

  Ibn Arabi

  Ignorance, Missing, Matter

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• It is not in the nature of lenses to tell the whole truth. They are instruments of exaggeration and belittlement.

  Walter J. Phillips

  Photography, Lenses, Instruments

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• Some help others in order to receive blessings and admiration. This is simply meaningless. Some cultivate themselves in part to serve others, in part to serve their own pride. They will understand, at best, half of the truth. But those who improve themselves for the sake of the world - to these, the whole truth of the universe will be revealed.

  Laozi

  Pride, Blessing, Helping Others

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• Don't lie, but don't tell the whole truth.

  Baltasar Gracian

  Lying, Don't Lie, Whole

  "'Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia' ('The Art of Worldly Wisdom')". Book by Baltasar Gracián, Maxim 181, 1647.

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• When I have one foot in the grave, I will tell the whole truth about women. I shall tell it, jump into my coffin, pull the lid over me and say, "Do what you like now."

  Leo Tolstoy

  Women, Feet, Coffins

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• Raise your hands in the air, pump your fists, and solemnly swear to rock the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

  Kool Moe Dee

  Air, Hands, Rock And Roll

  Song: Get The Picture

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• The libraries of America are and must ever remain the home of free and inquiring minds. To them, our citizens-of all ages and races, of all creeds and persuasions-must be able to turn with clear confidence that there they can freely seek the whole truth, unvarnished by fashion and uncompromised by expediency.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Fashion, Home, Race

  Eisenhower, Dwight D. (1960). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953”, p.456, Best Books on

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• It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Truth, Lying, Mean

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• Between the two poles of whole-truth and half-truth is slung the chancy hammock in which we all rock.

  Shana Alexander

  Rocks, Two, Hammocks

  Shana Alexander (1976). “Talking woman”

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• San Francisco itself is art, above all literary art. Every block is a short story, every hill a novel. Every home a poem, every dweller within immortal. That is the whole truth.

  William Saroyan

  Art, Block, Home

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• Peace is the whole truth that wishes to enrapture humanity. War is the whole falsehood that wants to capture humanity. Peace begins in the soul and ends in the heart. War begins in the mind and ends in the body.

  Sri Chinmoy

  Peace, War, Heart

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• The reality of one night, let alone that of a whole lifetime, can never be the whole truth.

  Nicole Kidman

  Truth, Night, Reality

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• At the outset do not be worried about this big question-Truth. It is a very simple matter if each one of you starts with the desire to get as much as possible. No human being is constituted to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; and even the best of men must be content with fragments, with partial glimpses, never the full fruition. In this unsatisfied quest the attitude of mind, the desire, the thirst-a thirst that from the soul must arise!-the fervent longing, are the be-all and the end-all.

  William Osler

  Attitude, Science, Simple

  Sir William Osler (2001). “Osler's "a Way of Life" and Other Addresses, with Commentary and Annotations”, p.337, Duke University Press

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• The people who bind themselves to systems are those who are unable to encompass the whole truth and try to catch it by the tail; a system is like the tail of truth, but truth is like a lizard; it leaves its tail in your fingers and runs away knowing full well that it will grow a new one in a twinkling.

  Ivan Turgenev

  Running, Knowing, People

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• It is worth remembering (though there is nothing that we can do about it) that the world as it really is may easily be a far nastier place than it would be if scientific materialism were the whole truth and nothing but the truth about it.

  C. D. Broad

  Truth, Would Be, World

  C. D. Broad (2011). “Lectures on Psychical Research (Routledge Revivals): Incorporating the Perrott Lectures Given in Cambridge University in 1959 and 1960”, p.319, Routledge

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• Even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds

  John Stuart Mill

  Truth, Feelings, Prejudice

  John Stuart Mill (1859). “On Liberty”, p.95

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• When one is frightened of the truth then it is never the whole truth that one has an inkling of.

  Ludwig Wittgenstein

  Truth, Philosophy, Philosophical

  Ludwig Wittgenstein (1984). “Notebooks, 1914-1916”, p.30, University of Chicago Press

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