Sermon quotes on truth
Augustine of Hippo
Before God can deliver us we must undeceive ourselves.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
A God who let us prove his existence would be an idol.
Winston Churchill
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
Quentin Crisp
Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.
Arthur Conan Doyle
It is an old maxim of mine that when you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.
Robert Frost
Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
Lesslie Newbigin
The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.
Lesslie Newbigin
A person who wields power cannot see truth; that is the privilege of the powerless.
Dorothy Sayers
In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair…the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.
Arthur Schopenhauer
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.
Jonathan Swift
Tell truth, and shame the devil.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. “One word of truth outweighs the world.
Charles Spurgeon
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
Mark Twain
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Warren W. Wiersbe
Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.
Ravi Zacharias
We have a right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.
George Orwell
In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.
N.T. Wright
The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That’s why theology and worship belong together.
Oscar Wilde
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Mark Twain
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Timothy Keller
Jesus doesn’t just give us truths; he is the truth. Jesus is the prophet to end all prophets. He gives us hard-copy words from God, truths on which we can build our lives, truths we have to submit to, truths we have to obey, and truths we have to build our lives on, but he himself is the truth.
N.T. Wright
The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That’s why theology and worship belong together.
Robert Bellah, et al.
80 percent of Americans agree with the statement “an individual should arrive at his or her own religious beliefs independent of any church or synagogue.”
Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, University of California Press
Lesslie Newbigin
The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.
The Gospel in a Pluralist Society
G.K. Chesterton
Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction . . . For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it.
The Club of Queer Trades
G.K. Chesterton
Creeds must disagree: it is the whole fun of the thing. If I think the universe is triangular, and you think it is square, there cannot be room for two universes. We may argue politely, we may argue humanely, we may argue with great mutual benefit: but, obviously, we must argue. Modern toleration is really a tyranny. It is a tyranny because it is a silence. To say that I must not deny my opponent’s faith is to say I must not discuss it.
Illustrated London News, 10 Oct. 1908
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
But to deviate from the truth for the sake of some prospect of hope of our own can never be wise, however slight that deviation may be. It is not our judgement of the situation which can show us what is wise, but only the truth of the Word of God. Here alone lies the promise of God’s faithfulness and help. It will always be true that the wisest course for the disciple is always to abide solely by the Word of God in all simplicity.
Joe Klaas
The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.
Twelve Steps to Happiness.
Parker J. Palmer
The English word “truth” comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to our word “troth,” as in the ancient vow “I pledge thee my troth.” With this word one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in mutually accountable and transforming relationship…to know in truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one’s whole self…to know in truth is to be known as well.”
To Know as We Are Known: A Spirituality of Education.
Jen Wilkin
It is not new truths we need; we need old truths recently forgotten.
Miguel de Cervantes
Truth indeed rather alleviates than hurts, and will always bear up against falsehood, as oil does above water.
Galileo Galilei
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth.
To Mme. N.D. Fonvisin, in Letters of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends, trans. Ethel Colburn Mayne, 1914; repr., Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2006, 71.
C.S. Lewis
You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.
A Grief Observed, Faber & Faber
C. S. Lewis
What was the sense in saying that the enemy were in the wrong unless Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and ought to be have practiced? If they had no notion of what we mean by right, then, though we may still have had to fight them, wecould no more have blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.,
Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe.
Henry Morris
The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the crowning proof of Christianity. If the resurrection did not take place, then Christianity is a false religion. If it did take place, then Christ is God and the Christian faith is absolute truth.
Clarence Hall
If Easter says anything to us today, it says this: You can put truth in a grave, but it won’t stay there. You can nail it to a cross, wrap it up in winding sheets, and shut it up in a tomb, but it will rise!
Mark Twain
Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are most economical in its use.
Mark Twain
Get the facts first. You can distort them later.
Blaise Pascal
We arrive at the truth not by reason alone, but also by the heart.
Lord Acton
A false religion fears the progress of all truth; a true religion seeks and recognizes truth wherever it can be found.
Quoted in Roland Hill, Lord Acton (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), p. 138.
Flannery O’Connor
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.
Pablo Picasso
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
Luigi Pirandello
Truth’ [is] what we think it is at any given moment of time.
John Newton
Assurance grows by repeated conflict. . . . When we have been brought very low and helped, sorely wounded and healed, cast down and raised again . . . and when these things have been repeated to us and in us a thousand times over, we begin to learn to trust simply to the word and power of God.
Randy Alcorn
[Jesus is] the source of all truth, the embodiment of truth, and therefore the reference point for evaluating all truth-claims.
“How Is Jesus ‘the Truth’? from Jesus.org.
Paul E. Little
Belief doesn’t create truth. Unbelief doesn’t destroy truth. Christian faith goes beyond reason but not against reason.
Know Why You Believe, InterVarsity Press, 2008, p.21.
Czesław Miłosz
In a room where
people unanimously maintain
a conspiracy of silence,
one word of truth
sounds like a pistol shot.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Everyone is entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.
“An American Original,” Vanity Fair, November 2010.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“I know” seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression, “I thought I knew.”
On Certainty
Source Unknown
Who will tell you the truth? An enemy who hates you bitterly, and a friend who loves you dearly.
D. A. Carson
No truth which human beings may articulate can ever be articulated in a culture-transcending way-but that does not mean that the truth thus articulated does not transcend culture.
“Maintaining Scientific and Christian Truths in a Postmodern World,” Science & Christian Belief H, no. 2 (2002): 107-22.
Lyle E. Schaller
The final thing leaders will need is courage … the willingness to tell the truth, to say what is not politely or politically acceptable. … The most common expression of the courage to tell the truth is to say, ‘It ain’t workin’.’”
“Schaller: Courageous Leaders Can Say It Ain’t Workin’,” Penn-Jersey Baptist, February 2006.
Michelle Ferrigno Warren
Prophets were known for both their foretelling and forthtelling. Foretelling speaks to revealing future events and forthtelling speaks to the truth that God has already revealed. Much of what we think of regarding modern-day prophets is truth-telling what God has already revealed and reminding his people of the truth.
Mark Twain
When in doubt, tell the truth.
Following the Equator (1897)
Mark Twain
Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
Following the Equator (1897)
Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! …
And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness – and violence, decrepit, will fall….
ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD.
Nobel Lecture (1970).
Randy Alcorn
Birds need two wings to fly. With only one wing, they’re grounded. The gospel flies with the wings of grace and truth. Not one, but both.
The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance (Multnomah, 2003).
Randy Alcorn
Truth-oriented Christians love studying Scripture and theology. But sometimes they’re quick to judge and slow to forgive. They’re strong on truth, weak on grace. Grace-oriented Christians love forgiveness and freedom. But sometimes they neglect Bible study and see moral standards as “legalism.” They’re strong on grace, weak on truth.
The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance (Multnomah, 2003).
Randy Alcorn
If we minimize grace, the world sees no hope for salvation. If we minimize truth, the world sees no need for salvation.
The Grace and Truth Paradox: Responding with Christlike Balance (Multnomah, 2003).
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