Truth

"Like all dreamers I confuse disenchantment with truth."

"Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable."

"On some positions, cowardice asks the question, is it expedient? And then expedience comes along and asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? Conscience asks the question, is it right?There comes a time when one must take the position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must do it because conscience tells him it is right."

"I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world."

"You're so easy to read but the book is boring me."

"I examined the poets, and I look on them as people whose talent overawes both themselves and others, people who present themselves as wise men and are taken as such, when they are nothing of the sort. From poets, I moved to artists. No one was more ignorant about the arts than I; no one was more convinced that artists possessed really beautiful secrets. However, I noticed that their condition was no better than that of the poets and that both of them have the same misconceptions. Because the most skillful among them excel in their specialty, they look upon themselves as the wisest of men. In my eyes, this presumption completely tarnished their knowledge. As a result, putting myself in the place of the oracle and asking myself what I would prefer to be — what I was or what they were, to know what they have learned or to know that I know nothing — I replied to myself and to the god: I wish to remain who I am. We do not know — neither the sophists, nor the orators, nor the artists, nor I— what the True, the Good, and the Beautiful are. But there is this difference between us: although these people know nothing, they all believe they know something; whereas, I, if I know nothing, at least have no doubts about it. As a result, all this superiority in wisdom which the oracle has attributed to me reduces itself to the single point that I am strongly convinced that I am ignorant of what I do not know."

"Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons."

"There are some things one remembers even though they may never have happened."

"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."

"The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies."

"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."

"Expectations make people miserable, so whatever yours are, lower them. You'll definitely be happier."

"She has been to the compound before. She remembered this hallway. She knows about the initiation process. My mother was Dauntless."

"Sometimes what we want isn't what we need."

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"

"Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time."

"Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness."

"What I'm looking for is not out there, it is in me."

"The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins."

"Honest is how I want to look. The truth doesn't glitter and shine."