Errol Morris Quotes

Truth exists independent of style. It involves all kinds of issues. Properly considered, it's a quest, a pursuit. To say that vérité is more truthful than something that is narrated is just misplaced. Completely wrong. And the fact that people still talk about it as though they're really talking about something... it puzzles me greatly. A moment of reflection about it tells you that it makes no sense!

Truth is a point of view, but authenticity can't be faked.

I try and write the way things happen. I don't try and fulfill people's wishes.

I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.

I've always been inspired by Genet, Henry Miller and Hubert Selby, Jr., who taught me that you've got to tell a bigger truth in whatever you're doing, but the truth is not popular.

Truth is quite constricting, in a way. You endlessly see at the start of a film 'This is a true story'.

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.

When I paint a person, his enemies always find the portrait a good likeness.

I like documentaries because there's nothing to nitpick or criticize about scenes if they aren't just right. It's about honesty and real-life circumstances coming out. Granted it can be swayed by how people tell that story, but overall, I like it because it is true.

Truth is exact correspondence with reality.

I've always been interested in how to present something that relates to our reality - which is not really... I don't even know if documentary itself does as good a job. It has its own problems in trying to get at the reality of the situation.

The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty.

Just because something is beautifully written does not mean it is true.

I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me. That would be a pointless lie, a mere bit of artfulness.

One must be of one's time and paint what one sees.

Any claims on the truth in my pictures are only to be answered in the sense that a particular event did in fact happen and did take place in the here and now.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

Anybody who pretends to be objective isn't realistic.

Truth is its own defense.

The life of truth is cold.

All truths, not merely ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs, are highly beautiful.

Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty.

A novel which persuades us of its truth is true however full of lies it may be

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing.

Those who tell you that man is unable to perceive a reality undistorted by his senses, mean that they are unwilling to perceive a reality undistorted by their feelings. "Things as they are" are things as perceived by your mind; divorce them from reason and they become "things as perceived by your wishes.