A Quote by Marcus Tullius Cicero

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Quote Topics

Trust Edge Falsehood Himself Man Narrow Near Truth Well Wise Wise Man Would

Quote Author

Marcus Tullius Cicero
Roman - Statesman
106 BC - 43 BC

In order to understand the interrelation of truth and falsehood in life, a man must understand falsehood in himself, the constant incessant lies he tells himself.

G. I. Gurdjieff

That man is best who sees the truth himself. Good too is he who listens to wise counsel. But who is neither wise himself nor willing to ponder wisdom is not worth a straw.

Hesiod

If a man fasten his attention on a single aspect of truth and apply himself to that alone for a long time, the truth becomes distorted and not itself but falsehood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Though truth and falsehood be Near twins, yet truth a little elder is.

John Donne

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be a falsehood, or falsehood a truth.

Lysander Spooner

For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.

Lysander Spooner

There is no doubt that truth is to falsehood as light is to darkness; and so excellent a thing is truth that even when it touches humble and lowly matters, it still incomparably exceeds the uncertainty and falsehood in which great and elevated discourses are clothed; because even if falsehood be the fifth element of our minds, notwithstanding this, truth is the supreme nourishment of the higher intellects.

Leonardo da Vinci

Much has been said of the loneliness of wisdom, and how much the Truth seeker becomes a pilgrim wandering from star to star. To the ignorant, the wise man is lonely because he abides in distant heights of the mind. But the wise man himself does not feel lonely. Wisdom brings him nearer to life; closer to the heart of the world than the foolish man can ever be. Bookishness may lead to loneliness, and scholarship may end in a battle of beliefs, but the wise man gazing off into space sees not an emptiness, but a space full of life, truth, and law.

Manly Hall

Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.

Annie Besant

Accuracy of statement is one of the first elements of truth; inaccuracy is a near kin to falsehood.

Tryon Edwards

He tells so many lies that he convinces himself after a while that he's telling the truth. He just doesn't recognize truth or falsehood.

Robert Kennedy

Don't trust children with edge tools. Don't trust man, great God, with more power than he has until he has learned to use that little better. What a hell we should make of the world if we could do what we would!

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no crime more infamous than the violation of truth. It is apparent that men can be social beings no longer than they believe each other. When speech is employed only as the vehicle of falsehood, every man must disunite himself from others, inhabit his own cave and seek prey only for himself.

Samuel Johnson

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Samuel Johnson

Truth and falsehood are opposed; but truth is the norm not of truth only but of falsehood also.