Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Truth Quotes

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Truth is a torch but a tremendous one. That is why we hurry past it, shielding our eyes, indeed, in fear of getting burned.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The mathematician is perfect only in so far as he is a perfect being, in so far as he perceives the beauty of truth; only then will his work be thorough, transparent, comprehensive, pure, clear, attractive, and even elegant.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is not always needful for truth to take a definite shape; it is enough if it hovers about us like a spirit and produces harmony; if it is wafted through the air like the sound of a bell, grave and kindly.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is a very hard and troublesome thing to dispose of whole, half, and quarter-mistakes; to sift them and assign the portion of truth to its proper place.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mathematics, like dialectics, is an instrument of the inner higher sense, while in practice it is an art like rhetoric. For both of these, nothing has value but form; content is immaterial. Whether mathematics is adding up pennies or guineas, whether rhetoric is defending truth or falsehood, makes no difference to either.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A man avails himself of the truth so long as it is serviceable; but he seizes on what is false with a passionate eloquence as soon as he can make a momentary use of it.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is as certain as it is strange that truth and error come from one and the same source. Thus it is that we are often not at liberty to do violence to error, because at the same time we do violence to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To err is to be as though truth did not exist. To lay bare the error to oneself and others is retrospective discovery.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The most foolish of all errors is for clever young men to believe that they forfeit their originality in recognizing a truth which has already been recognized by others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Applied to practice, it [mathematics] becomes an art, like RHETORIC. In both these arts the form is everything, the substance nothing. To mathematics it is indifferent whether it reckons pence or pounds; to RHETORIC, whether it defends truth or falsehood.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Whoso is content with pure experience and acts upon it has enough of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Error is related to truth as sleeping is to waking. I have observed that when one has been in error, one turns to truth as though revitalized.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A mathematician is only perfect insofar as he is a perfect man, sensitive to the beauty of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
But who will dare to speak the truth out clear? The few who anything of truth have learned, And foolishly did not keep truth concealed, Their thoughts and visions to the common herd revealed, Since time began we've crucified and burned

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh happy he who still can hope in our day to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error! What we don't know is really what we need, and what we know is of no use to us whatever!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Error is to truth as sleep is to waking. I have observed that one turns, as if refreshed, from error back to truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Truth is contrary to our nature, not so error, and this for a very simple reason; truth demands that we should recognize ourselves as limited, error flatters us that, in one way or another, we are unlimited.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Truth is a torch, but a huge one, and so it is only with blinking eyes what we all of us try to get past it, in actual terror of being burnt.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The first and last thing demanded of genius is love of truth.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nothing is more damaging to a new truth than an old error.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I nothing had, and yet enough for youth—Joy in Illusion, ardent thirst for Truth. Give unrestrained, the old emotion, The bliss that touched the verge of pain, The strength of Hate, Love's deep devotion,—O, give me back my youth again!

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe