Theme
Truth
Honesty, facts, and the courage to face them.
Every quote here is provenance-checked. AI will happily put a fake quote on a beautiful slide — these are the ones you can actually use, with the right name on them.
Ready for your slide
Verified quotes about truth
Each is traced to a real source and correctly credited. ✓ Free to use = public domain, cleared for commercial reuse. Open one for a paste-ready credit line and its reuse status.
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us”
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right”
“A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence”
“An artist's duty is to reflect the times”
“Be still when you have nothing to say; when genuine passion moves you, say what you've got to say, and say it hot”
“Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them”
“Conventionality is not morality”
“Every society honors its live conformists, and its dead troublemakers”
“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are”
“Existence precedes essence”
“Hell is other people”
“I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others”
“I think, therefore I am”
“If it is not right, do not do it. If it is not true, do not say it”
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things”
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule”
“It takes two to speak the truth, — one to speak, and another to hear”
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced”
“Nothing is so firmly believed as that which we least know”
“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature”
“Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition”
“The pen is mightier than the sword”
“The world is a raving idiot, and no man can kill it”
“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast”
“There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about”
“They muddy the waters to make them look deep”
“Trust, but verify”
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another”
“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it — this is knowledge”
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent”
“Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality”
“England and America are two countries separated by a common language”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”
“In war, events of importance are the result of trivial causes”
No public-domain quotes on this theme yet — try another, or use an in-copyright one with attribution.
Don’t get caught out
Commonly shared about truth — but misattributed
Popular truth lines that get pinned on the wrong name. If you use one, credit it correctly.
“A moral system valid for all is basically immoral”
ReallyFriedrich Nietzsche · not Friedrich Nietzsche
“Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all the alternatives”
ReallyAbba Eban · not Winston Churchill
“Any man who thinks he is going to be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him should take a close look at the American Indian”
ReallyUnknown (anonymous newspaper filler) · not Henry Ford
“Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung”
ReallyPierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais · not Voltaire
“Atheism is a disease of the soul, before it becomes an error of the understanding”
ReallyPlato (idea) — wording by William Fleming, 1857 · not Plato
“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes”
Really@debihope · not Sigmund Freud
“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who has said it, not even if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense”
ReallyGautama Buddha · not Gautama Buddha
“Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor”
ReallyUnknown (anonymous internet author) · not William Shakespeare
“Collapsing any nation does not require the use of atomic bombs or long-range missiles. It only requires lowering the quality of education and allowing cheating in exams by students. The collapse of education is the collapse of the nation”
ReallyUnknown — an anonymous circulating text · not Nelson Mandela
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”
ReallyOrigin unknown · not Thomas Jefferson
“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day”
ReallyJoseph Addison · not Paulo Coelho
“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth”
ReallyMarcus Aurelius · not Marcus Aurelius
“God has no religion”
ReallyHenry Whitney Bellows · not Mahatma Gandhi
“Houston, we have a problem”
ReallyJim Lovell · not Jim Lovell
“I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds”
ReallyJohn Burroughs · not Thomas Edison
“I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet”
ReallyMason Locke Weems · not George Washington
“I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men”
ReallyDmitri Merezhkovsky · not Leonardo da Vinci
“I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned”
ReallyUnknown (anonymous, popularized c. 2014)