nugget of truth

plural nuggets of truth

1. idiomaticA small amount of truth in a generally untrue statement.

   This book identifies twelve teachings that sound plausible because they each contain a nugget of truth.

   2003, Henry Cloud, Making Small Groups Work: What Every Small Group Leader Needs to Know, page 286

   2 more examples

   Even in its moderate form, this argument presupposes that factual elements can be plucked out of panegyric as nuggets of truth isolated from the dross of empty verbiage.

   1989, Walter A. Goffart, Rome's Fall and After, page 59

   Unfortunately, there is a nugget of truth to the notion of black and Hispanic tensions but, like politics, the friction tends to be very local.

   2008 January 28, “Clinton's Hispanic edge over Obama”, in Chicago Tribune