Truth & Honesty

I have always believed that exercise is the key not only to physical health but to peace of mind.

Nelson Mandela Long Walk to Freedom

I believe most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarcity of opportunity to be otherwise.

Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings & Essays

I believe the main task of the spirit is to free man from his ego.

Albert Einstein Ideas and Opinions

The best antidote for pseudoscience, I firmly believe, is science.

Carl Sagan Cosmos & Pale Blue Dot

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl Man's Search for Meaning

If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.

Rabindranath Tagore Gitanjali & Stray Birds

A truth is to be known always, to be uttered sometimes.

Kahlil Gibran The Prophet

The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.

Hannah Arendt The Human Condition

I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth — and truth rewarded me.

Simone de Beauvoir The Ethics of Ambiguity

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Bertrand Russell The Conquest of Happiness

Natural science is throughout either a pure or an applied doctrine of motion.

Immanuel Kant Critique of Practical Reason

One who leans on others cannot serve the God of Truth.

Swami Vivekananda Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda

以虞待不虞者勝。 • He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

Honesta enim bonis viris, non occulta quaeruntur.

Cicero De Officiis & Tusculan Disputations

Factus est Deus homo ut homo fieret Deus.

Augustine of Hippo Confessions

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

Blaise Pascal Pensées

All that we refrain from and all that we do, let us not do or refrain from merely because it seems to the multitude somehow honorable or base, but because it is forbidden by reason and the god within us.

Marcus Aurelius Meditations

Volat ambiguis Mobilis alis hora. The swift hour flies on double wings.

Seneca Moral Letters to Lucilius

Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.

Epictetus Discourses & Enchiridion

Ηe knew nothing except just the fact of his ignorance. • Alternate translation: I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

Socrates Apology (via Plato)

There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.

Plato The Republic & Dialogues

Liars ... when they speak the truth they are not believed.

Aristotle Nicomachean Ethics

Honesty and trust are promoted, and good neighborliness cultivated.

Confucius The Analects (Lunyu)

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

Laozi Tao Te Ching

From the Three Dynasties down to the present day it has been like this. The good and honest people are ignored, while spineless flatterers are advanced.

Zhuangzi Zhuangzi

If, Mahāmati, meat is not eaten by anybody for any reason, there will be no destroyer of life.

Gautama Buddha Dhammapada & Sutta Pitaka