Truth Quotes
“If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor” is credited to Einstein and flagged as misattributed. The earliest attribution found is in Arthur Koestler’s The Yogi and the Commissar (1945). It appears to be a rewording of something Einstein did write: in the preface to Relativity (1916) he says he followed the physicist Ludwig Boltzmann’s rule that matters of elegance should be left to the tailor and the cobbler. So the idea is Boltzmann’s, and Einstein credited it to him. The version people repeat came later.
Elsewhere on the page, Ulysses S. Grant, in his Personal Memoirs (1885), notes that wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true. Pope John Paul II, in Fides et Ratio (1998), writes that every truth presents itself as universal, even when it is not the whole truth.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.
The bird of truth would not be able to fly if it weren't for the air of lies we breathe.
There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.
There is one river of truth, which receives tributaries from every side.
Without form or comeliness, and nailed to the cross—thus is truth to be adored.
Maybe if we tell the truth about the past, we can tell the truth about the present.
The semblance of absolute truth is nothing but absolute conformism.
Nature * * * has buried truth deep in the bottom of the sea.
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
How sweet the words of truth breathed from the lips of love!
If our so-called facts are changing shadows, they are shadows cast by the light of constant truth.