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The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.
--
Ch. 2 : Writing for the Stage, p. 67

 

Vaclav Havel

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What, given the circumstances, would have been Emphyrio’s course of action?
Truth.
Very well, thought Ghyl: it shall be Truth, and let the consequences fall where they may.

 

Jack Vance

 

Truth cannot be given to you; especially if you are following an organized religion, then truth will be as far from you as darkness is from light. Truth is not found by observing rituals, undertaking pilgrimages or reading the scriptures. It is simply a waste of time.

 

Anandmurti Gurumaa

 

I have not written all this to complain: I have simply written the truth. I do not intend by what I have written to compliment myself: I have simply set down exactly what happened. Since I have made it a point in this history to write the truth of every matter and to set down no more than the reality of every event, as a consequence I have reported every good and evil I have seen of father and brother and set down the actuality of every fault and virtue of relative and stranger. May the reader excuse me; may the listener take me not to task.

 

Babur

 

Art’s means of representing a thing – style, technique and the object represented – are circumstances of art, just as the artist’s individual qualities (way of life, abilities, environment and so on) are circumstances of art. Art can just as well be made in harmony with the circumstances of its making as in defiance of them. In itself art is neither visible nor definable: all that is visible and imitable is its circumstances, which are easily mistaken for the art itself.

 

Gerhard Richter

 

It is a piece of idle sentimentality that truth, merely as truth, has any inherent power denied to error, of prevailing against the dungeon and the stake. Men are not more zealous for truth than they often are for error, and a sufficient application of legal or even of social penalties will generally succeed in stopping the propagation of either. The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

 

John Stuart Mill