Truth is not only violated by falsehood it may be equally outraged by silence.

This remark is generally attributed to the Swiss moralist and diarist Henri-Frédéric Amiel and is typically cited as coming from his private journal. Amiel’s Journal intime records reflective, aphoristic observations on conscience, duty, and the moral costs of inaction—especially the temptation to withdraw into inwardness rather than speak or act publicly. In that setting, the thought functions as a self-directed ethical warning: one can become complicit in wrongdoing not only by saying what is untrue, but by refusing to testify to what one knows. The line has therefore been widely reused in later discussions of civic responsibility and moral courage.

Amiel’s line argues that truth is not merely a matter of avoiding lies; it also requires resisting the temptation to withhold what one knows when silence enables error or injustice. The quote treats omission as ethically comparable to commission: refusing to correct a falsehood, to testify, or to name wrongdoing can “outrage” truth just as directly as speaking an untruth. It highlights a moral dimension of speech—truthfulness as active responsibility rather than passive accuracy. The aphorism is often read as a call to civic and personal courage: integrity may demand disclosure, witness, or protest, not only private belief.