Truth matters. But we live in an age where objective truth is no longer seen as paramount. Instead, many people today speak in terms of ‘my truth’ as opposed to Truth with a capital T which is something everyone must submit to. The relativising of truth will always lead to trouble.
Here are 55 more quotes that can be added to that list, mainly penned by Christians:
“I’d rather starve and rot and keep the privilege of speaking the truth than of holding all the offices that politics offers.” Henry Adams
“People prefer to believe what they prefer to be true.” Sir Francis Bacon
“Too often what passes for unity is really compromise. It is better to be divided by truth than united in error.” Bruce Bickel
“In his first letter the apostle John establishes three tests of genuine Christian profession: a truth test (believers must believe certain things to be true), a love test (believers must genuinely love one another), and an obedience test (believers must do what Jesus says).” D. A. Carson
“Truth can understand error, but error cannot understand truth.” G. K. Chesterton
“The whole truth is generally the ally of virtue; a half-truth is always the ally of some vice.” G. K. Chesterton
“If the standard changes, how can there be improvement, which implies a standard?” G. K. Chesterton
“Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.” G. K. Chesterton
“A man was meant to be doubting himself but undoubting about the Truth. This has been exactly reversed. Nowadays the part of a man that a man does assert is exactly the part he ought not to assert – himself. The part he doubts is exactly the part he ought not to doubt – the Divine Reason.” G. K. Chesterton
“Truth is incontrovertible. Panic may resent it. Ignorance may deride it. Malice may distort it. But there it is.” Winston Churchill
“Without truth, grace can be deceptive and, without grace, truth can be debilitating.” Charles Colson
“The most scandalous thing that one can do today is make a truth claim.” Charles Colson
“All truth is given by revelation, either general or special, and it must be received by reason. Reason is the God-given means for discovering the truth that God discloses, whether in his world or his Word. While God wants to reach the heart with truth, he does not bypass the mind.” Jonathan Edwards
“We must have faith that truth is luminously powerful, so that if we bear witness to the truth about, say, marriage and the sanctity of human life—lovingly, civilly, but also passionately and with determination—and if we honor the truth in advancing our positions, then even many of our fellow citizens who now find themselves on the other side of these issues will come around.” Robert George
“Since the truth may not be what we would prefer. It is revealing that so many people today express approval by saying, ‘I’m comfortable with that,’ and disapproval by saying, ‘I’m not comfortable with that.’ Comfort is important when it comes to furniture and headphones, but it is irrelevant when it comes to truth.” Douglas Groothuis
“In the biblical view, truth is that which is ultimately, finally, and absolutely real, or the ‘way it is,’ and therefore is utterly trustworthy and dependable, being grounded in God’s own reality and truthfulness. . . . Belief in something doesn’t make it true; only truth makes a belief true. But without truth, a belief may be only speculation plus sincerity.” Os Guinness
“Contemporary evangelicals are no longer people of truth. Only rarely are they serious about theology. . . . With magnificent exceptions, evangelicals reflect this truth-decay and reinforce it for their own variety of reasons for discounting theology.” Os Guinness
“Like an eternal jack-in-the-box, the Christian truth will always spring back. No power on earth can finally keep it down, not even the power of Babylonian confusion and captivity. ‘At least five times,’ noted GK Chesterton, ‘the faith has to all appearances gone to the dogs. In each of these five cases, it was the dog that died’.” Os Guinness
“Nothing sharpens us better for resistance thinking and guards us from slipping into lazy, cowardly thinking than wrestling with truths that are unpopular.” Os Guinness
“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” President Thomas Jefferson
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.” C. S. Lewis
“There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there’s never more than one.” C. S. Lewis
“Christianity is truth, and truth comes to the mind, and truth is intellectual. This is not sob stuff; this is not emotionalism. The very first thing that happens to people who become Christians is that they begin to think straighter; the highway of the mind is laid open, and they begin to see life as they have never seen it before. The Spirit comes and gives them a new understanding, and for the first time they have a whole view of life.” Martyn Lloyd-Jones
“Truth is truth, whether from the lips of Jesus or Balaam.” George MacDonald
“When truth is denied, therapy remains. The critical question shifts from ‘What is true?’ to ‘What makes me feel good?’” Al Mohler
“You may be entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.” Senator Patrick Moynihan
“The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those that speak it.” George Orwell
“The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” George Orwell
“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell
“When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on board ship. When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point.” Blaise Pascal
“It is better to be divided by Truth, than to be united in error. It is better to speak the Truth that hurts and then heals, than to speak a lie that will comfort and then kill. It is better to be hated for telling the Truth, than to be loved for telling a lie. It is better to stand alone with the Truth, than to be wrong with a multitude. Better to ultimately die with the Truth, than to live with a lie.” Adrian Rogers
“Controversy is an odious thing, but there are days when it is a positive duty. Peace is an excellent thing, but, like gold, it may be bought too dear. Unity is a mighty blessing, but it is worthless if it is purchased at the cost of truth. Once more I say, Open your eyes and be on your guard.” J. C. Ryle
“We should note this curious mark of our own age: the only absolute allowed is the absolute insistence that there is no absolute.” Francis Schaeffer
“Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural but, rather, truth spelled with a capital ‘T.’ Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Christianity, biblical Christianity, is Truth concerning total reality – and the intellectual holding of that total Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.” Francis Schaeffer
“Those who boast of their open-mindedness are invariably those who love to search for truth but not to find it; they love the chase but not the capture; they admire the footprints of truth, but not catching up with it. They go through life talking about ‘widening the horizons of truth’ without ever seeing the sun. Truth brings with it grave responsibilities; that is why so many keep their hands open to welcome it but never close them to grasp it.” Fulton J Sheen
“It is the calling of great men, not so much to preach new truths, as to rescue from oblivion those old truths which it is our wisdom to remember and our weakness to forget.” English writer Sydney Smith
“Truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn
“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.” Thomas Sowell
“Some things are believed because they are demonstrably true, but many other things are believed simply because they have been asserted repeatedly.” Thomas Sowell
“There can hardly be goodness in a man if he is not angered by sin; he who loves truth must hate every false way.” Charles Spurgeon
“I am quite sure that the best way to promote union is to promote truth. It will not do for us to be all united together by yielding to one another’s mistakes.” Charles Spurgeon
“Controversy for the truth against the errors of the age is, we feel more than ever convinced, the peculiar duty of the preacher.” Charles Spurgeon
“The only ‘sin’ left in America is the presumption that truth can be found, or worse, that you have found it.” Cal Thomas
“Truth is a glorious but hard mistress. She never consults, bargains or compromises.” A. W. Tozer
“The real truth is always subversive.” Dissident Czech novelist Zdenek Urbanek
“Those who claim that truth is a matter of perception and opinion are proclaiming this as more than a matter of perspective and opinion. They would like us to believe that this definition is objectively true, even as they deny the existence of objective truth.” J. Warner Wallace
“Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.” President George Washington
“Seize upon truth, where’er ‘tis found,
Among your friends, among your foes,
On Christian or on Heathen ground.
The flower’s divine, where’er it grows.
Neglect the prickles and assume the rose.” Isaac Watts
“When the consumer is allowed to be sovereign in Church, the Church is abdicating from its responsibility because it is allowing truth to become displace by spiritual and psychological desire.” David Wells
“Retailing help for felt needs is what the massive self-help industry is about. What distinguishes the Church from the industry is truth. It is truth about God and about ourselves that displaces the consumer from his or her current perch of sovereignty in the Church and places God in the place where he should be.” David Wells
“The desire that something be true, rather than the desire for truth itself, may well be the root of all evil. It is certainly the origin of all ideology, and ideology was the source of much of the evil in the past century.” Benjamin Wiker
“There is a certain logical exclusiveness built into knowledge as such, and it must be respected. This is due to the fact that knowledge involves truth. Truth by its very nature is exclusive in the following sense. If any belief is true, that by itself excludes the truth of any belief contrary or contradictory to it.” Dallas Willard
“Truth is what enables us to deal with reality successfully.” Dallas Willard
“Truth is the thread that separates true spirituality from false spirituality. Spirituality does not give relevance to life; rather, truth gives relevance to spirituality. You must not dare to get sidetracked with ceremony or legalism! Your spirituality must be born of the truth and lived out in grace!” Ravi Zacharias
Thanks for that, great stuff.
The Fulton Sheen quote was the newest thought for me.
A kind of virtue signaling.
May I add my own?
“Grace without Truth is not Grace.
Truth without Grace is still Truth, but it may be rejected, for a while.”
Speaking of truth or rather, when society deviates from it, a situation that’s beyond any coherent comprehension….
https://www.binary.org.au/australian-lesbian-denied-the-right-to-meet-with-females-only
Thanks for that, great stuff.
The Fulton Sheen quote was the newest thought for me.
A kind of virtue signaling.
May I add my own?
“Grace without Truth is not Grace.
Truth without Grace is still Truth, but it may be rejected, for a while.”