Gray is the color of truth.

Quote Investigator tentatively credits Jacques de Biez, on Brownell’s indirect report in Scribner’s Magazine (February 1889, p. 245). The attribution is therefore provisional, not a confirmed discovery of de Biez’s own text. Its research also records a 1967 use by McGeorge Bundy and a Gide credit in Hector Arce’s Groucho (1979, p. 479). It reports that the 2011 English Autumn Leaves places the maxim in an added “Selected Quotes” section and that it is absent from the 1950 edition checked by that researcher. These publications were not inspected in this run: all trail steps are explicitly secondary. The held French Les Nourritures terrestres was checked for the gray/truth wording; no matching passage was found. Gide’s other books and complete journals were not searched. Neither the first-ever use nor the first-ever credit to Gide is claimed.

1. February 1889Earliest found · credited to Jacques de BiezBrownell reports de Biez’s comparison of gray skies with truth; the earliest match located by Quote Investigator.W. C. Brownell, “French Traits — The Art Instinct”, Scribner’s Magazine, vol. 5, no. 2 (February 1889), p. 245, column 2. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 28 May 1967Spread · credited to McGeorge BundyA newspaper prints Bundy’s Vietnam debate rules, using gray truth to introduce the conflict’s complexity.McGeorge Bundy, “The Great Debate on Vietnam: Bundy’s Ten ‘Rules’”, Alexandria Daily Town Talk, 28 May 1967, p. B5, column 2. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
3. 1979Credited to André GideArce uses the maxim as an epigraph credited to Gide.Hector Arce, Groucho (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979), chapter 15 epigraph, p. 479. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
4. 2011Spread · credited to André GideAn added “Selected Quotes” section in Autumn Leaves repeats the maxim; QI distinguishes it from the original book.André Gide, Autumn Leaves, translated by Elsie Pell (Philosophical Library / Open Road Integrated Media, 2011), supplementary “Selected Quotes” section, unnumbered page. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

The earliest evidence reported by Quote Investigator concerns French painting and its preference for gray, not a Gide diary entry. Brownell attributes the thought to the critic Jacques de Biez. Later appearances turn it into a free-standing maxim, and a posthumous Gide attribution eventually reaches supplementary material in an English edition of Autumn Leaves.

Truth is pictured as a shade between extremes rather than as a simple black-or-white answer.

Finding a line in an added selected-quotations section does not establish that it occurs in the author’s original book.

Truth

• If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. (not found) Bernard Baruch
• Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. (not found) Aristotle
• It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. (not found) Aristotle
• That which is not good for the swarm, neither is it good for the bee. (paraphrase) Marcus Aurelius
• The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. (paraphrase) Henry David Thoreau

• quoteinvestigator.com/2017/06/11/gray-truth

“Gray is the color of truth.” Attributed to André Gide. No. No reliable Gide source is established. The saying is tentatively traced to Jacques de Biez, quoted by W. C. Brownell in 1889. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/gray-is-the-color-of-truth/ (checked 29 October 2026).

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