Holly Near Quotes

Opinions are made to be changed - or how is truth to be got at?

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

It is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.

The facts will take us where the facts will take us.

The true facts are not always obvious. They often have to be looked for.

Maybe the social value of truth is as a destination - so long as we do not assume we have arrived there.

A life of total dedication to the truth also means a life of willingness to be personally challenged.

My longing for truth was a single prayer.

Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.

Nothing energizes me more than to burrow myself under a pile of received wisdom and emerge triumphant with the truth.

I was always one of those guys who was a seeker after truth. I want to know what's going on.

I think what's always important is not to be contrarian for its own sake but to really get at the truth.

If we bring not the good courage of minds covetous of truth, and truth only, prepared to hear all things, and decide upon all things, according to evidence, we should do more wisely to sit down contented in ignorance, than to bestir ourselves only to reap disappointment.

As one may bring himself to believe almost anything he is inclined to believe, it makes all the difference whether we begin or end with the inquiry, 'What is truth?'

The people who have sufficient passion for the truth to give the truth a chance to prevail, if it runs counter to their bias, are in a minority. How important is this "minority?" It is difficult to say at this point, for, at the present time their influence on governmental decisions is not perceptible.

The inquiry, knowledge, and belief of truth is the sovereign good of human nature.

Modern science's defense against self-delusion relies upon a spirit of open and critical inquiry. This, though hardly infallible, ostensibly uncovers errors and thereby proceeds towards objective truth

The truth is what you say it is, and that’s not a good place to be.

I reject the idea that journalists are messengers of the truth. It’s arrogant. I think journalism is a search for the little relative truths that at best keep us relatively sane.

We must never forget that higher knowledge has to do with revering truth and insight and not with revering people.

What is the truth? Is it what you experience? Is it what I experience? Or is there some objective truth in between?

I write from what I take to be the realist's point of view, looking at life as it really is - or the way I see it to be.

He was guided by what he saw rather than by what he wanted to believe.

Your version of the truth is all that matters.

If we are to define science, ... it does not consist so much in knowing, nor even in "organized knowledge," as it does in diligent inquiry into truth for truth's sake, without any sort of axe to grind, nor for the sake of the delight of contemplating it, but from an impulse to penetrate into the reason of things.