Alan Alda Quotes

I know now that there is no one thing that is true - it is all true.

All vital truth contains the memory of all that for which it is not true.

Facts are not truths; they are not conclusions; they are not even premises, but in the nature and parts of premises.

One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.

Socrates is not just expounding noble ideas in a vacuum. He is in the middle of a war between those who think truth is absolute and those who think truth is relative. He is fighting that war with everything he has.

Of course, there are different truths on different levels. Things are true relative to other things; "long" and "short" relate to each other, "high" and "low," and so on. But is there any absolute truth? Something self-sufficient, independently true in itself? I don't think so.

What kind of truth is this which is true on one side of a mountain and false on the other?

A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.

Which came first, the phoenix or the flame?” "...I think the answer is that a circle has no beginning." "Well reasoned.

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

Everything hangs on one's thinking.

The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.

I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.

What is simple is wrong, and what is complicated cannot be understood.

Life is more complicated than we think, yet far simpler than anyone dares to imagine

Everything is true and not true about everything. That’s one thing I’ve learned.

It is not certain that everything is certain, neither is it certain that everything is uncertain.

One man's antinomy is another man's falsidical paradox, give or take a couple of thousand years.

By proving contraries, truth is made manifest.

I am the truth, since I am part of what is real, but neither more nor less than those around me.

All reasoning ends in an appeal to self-evidence.

If you will take my advice you will think little of Socrates, and a great deal more of truth.

Remember that all is opinion. For what was said by the Cynic Monimus is manifest: and manifest too is the use of what was said, if a man receives what may be got out of it as far as it is true.

The instruments for the quest for Truth are as simple as they are difficult.

God forbid that Truth should be confined to Mathematical Demonstration!