“Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad”

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” is from John 8:32 of the King James Bible. “Thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad” is from Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic (1921) by Raymond Melbourne Weaver.  “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad as the dickens” was cited in a 1922 Texas newspaper.
 
English writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was credited, in 1928, with “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.” However, it does not appear that Huxley used this line first. American lawyer Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) also used the “truth shall make you mad” saying.
 
   
Bible Hub
John 8:32
King James Bible
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
 
Wikipedia: Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley /ˈhʌksli/ (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer, philosopher and a prominent member of the Huxley family.
     
Google Books
Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic
By Raymond Melbourne Weaver  
New York, NY: George H. Doran Company
1921
Pg. 26:
Thou shalt know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad. To the eye of truth, so Melville would convince us, “the palsied universe lies before us as a leper;” “all deified Nature absolutely paints like a harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnal house within.”
 
23 November 1922, Brownwood (TX) Bulletin, pg. 4, col. 3:
“Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” is the motto of a Texas newspaper. As a matter of fact, though, the motto, for newspaper use, ought to read thus: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad as the dickens.” Always verify your quotations.
 
18 March 1933, The Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT), “The Senator from Sandpit: Notes on the Cuff Department,” pg. 4, col. 7:
Famous saying revised to fit modern condition: Senatorial investigation of Wall street. “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad!”
   
30 March 1928, San Francisco (CA) Chronicle, “Katherine May’s India Book Decried at Center Meeting,” pg. 12, col. 2:
“Here is Miss Mayo writing this book and a Seattle woman going to India to adopt it as her own land. I heard it once said that ‘You shall hear the truth and the truth shall make you mad.’ So perhaps it is with Miss Mayo’s book.”
(Dr. Stanley Armstrong Ewing College, Hunter, former teacher at Allahabad, India.—ed.)
 
Google Books
The Christian Century
Volume 45
1928
Pg. 823:
The realistic literary school of our day focusing its gaze on the sordid side of human nature, expresses, through a spokesman, Mr. Aldous Huxley, its conviction by saying, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
     
Google Books
The Unitarian Register
Volume 107
1928
Pg. 104:
“Ye shall know the truth,” says Aldous Huxley, “and the truth shall make you mad.”
Pg. 655 (August 16, 1928):
But I fear sometimes that Professor Huxley more nearly sensed the true situation when he said, “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you mad.”
 
11 December 1933, Charlotte (NC) Observer, “Everyday Religion” by Dr. Joseph Fort Newton, pg. 16, col. 6:
Or take two modern sayings, one about the World War: “If the war did not teach us to love our enemies, it at least taught us to hate our allies.” And this: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you—mad!” Such sayings, dipped in acid and salted with cynicism, inhibit our best life and leave us helpless.
 
Google Books
Clarence Darrow for the Defense
By Irving Stone
Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
1941
Pg. 168:
Watching his audiences, even as he had watched the expressions of his Kinsman audiences, he found that he had to transpose his adage of “The truth shall make you free” to read, “The truth shall make you mad.”
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The truth shall make you mad
Author: E Lee Smith
Publisher: [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1958?]
Edition/Format:   Print book : English : 1st ed
 
OCLC WorldCat record
The Truth Shall Make You Mad The Lyrics of Jim Morrison and the Doors.
Author: Morrison, Jim
Publisher: Backbeat Books 2008.
Edition/Format:   Print book : English