Devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking.
But what after all are man’s truths? They are his irrefutable errors.[Was sind denn zuletzt die Wahrheiten des Menschen? – Es sind die unwiderlegbaren Irrthümer des Menschen.]
Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.
Being in a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.
Art is with us in order that we may not perish through truth.[Wir haben die Kunst, damit wir nicht an der Wahrheit zugrunde gehen.]
Any truth is better than indefinite doubt.
And even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie.
All error, not merely verbal, is a strong way of stating that the current truth is incomplete.
After all – I suppose fiction is founded on the truth. I mean unless things did happen, people couldn’t think of them.
A man is not permitted without censure to follow his own thoughts in the search of truth, when they lead him ever so little out of the common road.
A man driven by rage may stumble, in his passion, onto truth.
‘Truth’ is a governmental concept.