Edwin Way Teale Quotes

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

Too pissed off to cry, I said, 'This is only making me hate her. I don't want to hate her. And what's the point, if that's all it's making me do?' Still refusing to answer how and why questions. Still insisting on an aura of mystery. I leaned forward, head between by knees, and the Colonel placed a head on my upper back. 'The point is that there are always alsweres, Pudge.' And then he pushed air out between his pursed lips and I could hear the angry quiver in his voice as he repeated, 'There are always answers. We just have to be smart enough.' ~Miles/Pudge and Chip/the Colonel, pg 168

What we search for in fiction is not so much reality, but the epiphany of truth.

We can speak very much to the purpose and yet in such a way that the whole world cries out in contradiction: namely, when we are not speaking to the whole world.

The ultimate truth is penultimately a falsehood.

The word of knowledge, strictly employed, implies three things: truth, proof, and conviction.

I hold that it is only when we can prove everything we assert that we understand perfectly the thing under consideration.

For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert, but for every fact there is not necessarily an equal and opposite fact.

Suspecting and knowing are not the same.

The God who inspired the Bible is the same God who made the universe, Earth, and all life. This God is the very definition of truth; therefore nature's record will never contradict Scripture and vice versa. When a seeming contradiction confronts us, we can know with certainty we have either misunderstood (one, the other, or both revelations) or perhaps we haven't yet dug deploy enough. Whatever the case, we can embrace the opportunity to gain greater knowledge and appreciation for the Bible, for nature, and for the God who is responsible for both.

Democritus says, "But we know nothing really; for truth lies deep down".

The businessman who assumes that his life is everything, and the mystic who asserts that it is nothing, fail, on this side and on that, to hit the truth. ‘Yes, I see, dear; it’s about half-way between,’ Aunt Juley had hazarded in earlier years. No; truth, being alive, was not halfway between anything. It was only to be found by continuous excursions into either realm, and though proportion is the final secret, to espouse it at the outset is to ensure sterility.

Pushing any truth out very far, you are met by a counter-truth.

Perhaps there is more sense in our nonsense and more nonsense in our 'sense' than we would care to believe.

There is always room for at least two truths.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower into a truth.

There are a dozen views about everything until you know the answer. Then there's never more than one.

Answers are a perilous grip on the universe. They can appear sensible yet explain nothing.

You'll often hear the phrase "science doesn't know everything." Well, of course it doesn't know everything. But just because science doesn't know everything doesn't mean that it knows nothing.

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

Within the extent of your knowledge, you are right.

Things true and evident must of necessity be recognized by those who would contradict them.

Every face, every shop, bedroom window, public-house, and dark square is a picture feverishly turned--in search of what? It is the same with books. What do we seek through millions of pages?

If there are questions then, of course, there are answers, but the final answer makes the questions seem absurd.

The things of which we want the proof are those we know the best.