Being Told Quotes

#1. Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told.

Harpo Marx

#2. Games are not about being told things. If you want to tell people things, write a book or make a movie. Games are dialogues - and dialogue requires both parties to take the floor once in a while

Warren Spector

#3. You're mine. The minute I told you to spread your legs and you did it, you were mine. When I told you to beg for it and you did, you were mine. When you put your hands behind your back without being told, I owned you. You never had to say a word. You're a natural submissive.

C.D. Reiss

#4. I think the music business is probably not happy with what we've done, because the people buying the record have actually got to pick what they want to buy, rather than being told what they should buy.

John Otway

#5. We are changed not by being told what we need to do for God, but by hearing the news about what God has done for us.

J.D. Greear

#6. I've always operated under the notion that audiences don't always know when they're being lied to, but that they always know when they're being told the truth.

Sean Penn

#7. He said that in a way being loved is like being told you never have to die.

Timothy Findley

#8. You survive by having your fear compass calibrated correctly. Our compass is off now because we're being told to be afraid of everything. The things that we're frightened of, or told to be frightened of, are not necessarily the things that we need to fear.

Michael Moore

#9. Billions of women must be out there on this seven-billion-person planet being told that they are not reliable witnesses to their own lives, that the truth is not their property, now or ever.

Rebecca Solnit

#10. But it is very foolish to ask questions about any young ladies - about any three sisters just grown up; for one knows, without being told, exactly what they are - all very accomplished and pleasing, and one very pretty. There is a beauty in every family. - It is a regular thing

Jane Austen

#11. The Bible tells a story. A story that isn't over. A story that is still being told. A story that we have a part to play in.

Rob Bell

#12. People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.

Paulo Coelho

#13. To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.

Umberto Eco

#14. I think I was brought up with games and I don't think that they're just Pac-Man or Space Invaders. I think we've moved on, I think that there are stories being told and worlds being explored.

Duncan Jones

#15. I began composing works which were imitative of the music I was being told about. I was also very interested in translating the music into visual terms.

Henry Flynt

#16. Information is acquired by being told, whereas knowledge can be acquired by thinking.

Fritz Machlup

#17. Without being told, he'd ordered what I wanted. It was another of the many serendipitous things that always made me feel like we were destined to end up in the same place, together, if only we could make it that far.

Sylvia Day

#18. How wonderful to simply do things instead of wondering if they are worth doing or discussing whether to do them or being told not to do them or listening to somebody else describe doing them.

Ahdaf Soueif

#19. But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

Ali Smith

#20. If it weren't for my breast cancer, I wouldn't be a 'Today' host. After I got better, I talked to my boss about working on the show. Six months before, I'd have been terrified to go in there and ask for what I wanted. But after what I'd been through, how could I be scared of being told no?

Hoda Kotb

#21. The most successful givers aren't doing it because they're being told to. They do it because doing it is fun. It gives them joy.

Seth Godin

#22. And I know, without being told, that's what love does, when it's right-it makes you more than you were, more than you thought you could become.

Veronica Roth

#23. I can't remember if it was in the third grade in school, I was being told that two amoeba happened to hit in a muddy puddle of water two billion years ago, and I was an accident. I was the result. I wasn't real smart, but I said, 'I don't like the sound of that.'

Joe Gibbs

#24. The minute I told you to spread your legs and you did it, you were mine. When I told you to beg for it and you did, you were mine. When you put your hands behind your back without being told, I owned you.

C.D. Reiss

#25. Protein, we keep being told, is the vital nutrient that will give us a boost. It will burn fat, build muscle, reduce tiredness and kill our hunger pangs. Maybe if we shake enough protein powder into our daily smoothie, we will actually morph into Gwyneth Paltrow.

Bee Wilson

#26. I support anyone finding their worth despite being told they can't do something.

Brooke Elliott

#27. Curiosity killed the cat". I had been one of those annoying children who constantly asked why after being told anything. It seemed that even as an adult I couldn't let things go. I had to dig deeper. I had to find out why.

Carrie Cox

#28. The American people know something is wrong as far as energy is concerned. They don't think they are being told the truth.

T. Boone Pickens

#29. I had grown used to getting a pat on the back and being told after a good result: 'Well done, David - you should be happy, you're the first clean rider.

David Millar

#30. I do not want to be cynical, but if developing nations are kept backward by being told, again and again, you belong to the poor and you are there, where you actually belong, then nothing will change.

Paul Kagame

#31. The Empire's got something worse than whips all right. It's got obedience. Whips in the soul. They obey anyone who tells them what to do. Freedom just means being told what to do by someone different.

Terry Pratchett

#32. Words are reflections. What we speak comes back to us. I prefer being told the truth, so I tell the truth. Within reason.

Marjorie M. Liu

#33. I think that, I'm sure there are gonna be some teachers who are very entrenched in the system, who are going to buy in to what they're being told, as to what the kids are being fed.

Morgan Spurlock

#34. Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures.

Anthony Browne

#35. It was all very well being told that she could do nothing to make things better. Neverfell did not have the kind of mind that could take that quietly. She did not have the kind of mind that could be quiet at all.

Frances Hardinge

#36. Education is not an affair of 'telling' and being told, but an active and constructive process.

John Dewey

#37. Voice isn't fixed or unmalleable, it adapts to the characters you are creating and the story being told. I suppose in some way that's true in life - a little flexibility goes a long way.

Ayana Mathis

#38. Of course he had a female following. Was there anything college girls found sexier than being told what to think?

Mira Jacob

#39. His optimism blinded her. He was full of plans. "I have an idea!" he said often. She imagined him as a child surrounded by too many brightly colored toys, always being encouraged to carry out "projects", always being told that his mundane ideas were wonderful.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

#40. At Beth Israel there had been Acinetobacter baumannii, which was resistant to vancomycin. "That's how you know it's a hospital infection," I recall being told by a doctor I asked at Columbia Presbyterian. "If it's resistant to vanc it's hospital. Because vanc only gets used in hospital settings.

Joan Didion

#41. My heart is in independent film-making. For me, it's where the fun, gritty storytelling is being told.

Aaron Paul

#42. I don't understand how most pop stars live this life being told what to do, what to wear, all the time. Maybe money does mean more to some people.

Miley Cyrus

#43. When rumours fly, when false tales are being told, be the storyteller.

Bernard Cornwell

#44. Nothing makes one so vain as being told that one is a sinner.

Oscar Wilde

#45. I don't really care what people say about me. I'm fine with lies and rumors. It's the truth I don't want being told.

Katja Millay

#46. I hate receiving compliments; I hate being told I'm talented or people think I'm going to be a movie star. I always feel that it's forced and fake.

Megan Fox

#47. We see people of kindness, compassion, and possibly even faith being told, "Because of a characteristic with which you were born, you are evil and bad." Anything that even implies such a stance is profoundly toxic.

Andrew Solomon

#48. To have one's own story told by a third party who doesn't know that the character in question is himself the hero of the story being told, that's a technical refinement.

Raymond Queneau

#49. That was the shocking part. Here we were in the midst of everything and this potentially giant story was being told and virtually noone was there.

Robert A. M. Stern

#50. Passion was something pure and indescribable - something one could see without being told.

N.K. Smith

#51. You are a story worthy of being told,
A person made to be loved,
With a life meant to be lived.

Nadia Hasan

#52. There's so much going on in the world. There's so much information being thrown at us - so many things are being sold to us, and we're being told how we should appear and how to be more successful, blah, blah, blah. How does that manifest itself? In the pressures, the stress, this need to escape.

Michael Fassbender

#53. I remember one time being told I could not play in a basketball game at the College of William and Mary because I was black, even though I was playing with a United States Army team.

Walter Dean Myers

#54. When making a point, there are 2 types of people who may disagree with you: those who can support their reasons, and the childish ones who are too worried about being told what to do.

Criss Jami

#55. I hate being told I can't do something because I'm a girl!

Thanhha Lai

#56. Gospel music to me has always been a balm for the soul. It has been able to usher in the spirit, usher in worship, true worship and praise, healing. I find the music to be very good at healing and the passion, you know, which is a testimony being told in song.

Kim Fields

#57. There is nothing like being told to go fuck yourself by the same person who was, only days before, praying on your behalf.

Henry Rollins

#58. Those who generate fog are Wizards of Oz hoping desperately that nobody pulls the curtain to reveal a trembling little writer behind it. This seldom happens. Readers who dare to point out that incomprehensible writing can't be comprehended risk being told that the problem is theirs.

Ralph Keyes

#59. Some indeed there are who profess to despise all flattery, but even these are nevertheless to be flattered, by being told that they do despise it.

Charles Caleb Colton

#60. Skinny women don't enjoy being told they're skinny nowadays. They enjoy telling you how they got that way, as though starvation were an achievement.

Russell Baker

#61. Edgar Allan Poe, an earlier UVA student, once complained in a letter that his stepfather spoke to him as if Poe were one of the black slaves; some of the students at UVA surely felt the same about being told what to do by faculty.

Matthew Pearl

#62. Perhaps the crescent moon smiles in doubt
at being told that it is a fragment
awaiting perfection.

Rabindranath Tagore

#63. You can do anything you want, even if you are being told negative things.stay strong and find motivation

Misty Copeland

#64. Unlike top management at Enron, exemplary leaders reward dissent. They encourage it. They understand that, whatever momentary discomfort they experience as a result of being told they might be wrong, it is more than offset by the fact that the information will help them make better decisions.

Warren G. Bennis

#65. In my opinion, it helps enormously to know why something is true, rather than being told it is true, for why should you believe me? Never believe anything on the authority of a single person but seek confirmation - and reason is the best confirmation.

Dennis Lindley

#66. Remember the picture of the president in the classroom, being told of the attack by chief of staff Andy Card? The American people thought they were seeing a man suddenly thrust into a grave challenge no one could have anticipated.

Howard Fineman

#67. I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It's one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

Dave Grohl

#68. WHEN YOU HEAR that now ubiquitous but dread phrase, 'I find that offensive', you know you're being told to shut up. It

Claire Fox

#69. I remember once being told by a casting person, years ago, that I shouldn't pursue a career in the business because of the color of my skin. The fact that I remember it today means it stuck with me. I thought that was really stupid advice and advice nobody should ever give someone.

Manish Dayal

#70. After being told that the Professor "found it possible to believe for a moment in the existence of God," Isak thought, "Has it been possible to God, at Mount Elgon, to believe for a moment in the existence of Professor Landgreen?

Isak Dinesen

#71. Being told to cut off and walk away from a child - I cannot imagine it. I think I'd rather die.

Kate Winslet

#72. Paradox
/pera,daks/ noun
1. Being told to wake up and come back to reality by your family and friends, while being dragged to church to hear a lesson on Jonah and the whale, followed by a sermon on believing in things you can't see without faith.

Shannon L. Alder

#73. If people can finally recognize you on radio without being told who it is, that's what you aim for.

Johnny Marr

#74. I spent years growing up being told what my sexuality was.

George Michael

#75. Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.

Alberto Manguel

#76. People say they want freedom, but what they really want is freedom from worry. If I take care of their problems, they don't mind being told what to do.

Patrick Ness

#77. No-one likes being told it's their lucky day. That sort of thing does not bode well. When someone tells you it's your lucky day, something bad is about to happen.

Terry Pratchett

#78. In this case, the actual presence of the Spirit of God upon Jesus stirred up a hunger for God in the people. That hunger brought a change in their attitudes without their being told it should change.

Bill Johnson

#79. She resented being told constantly that she was stupid, when she knew she wasn't.

Roald Dahl

#80. I don't like being told what to do and kissing you-know-what to get up the corporate ladder.

Robert Kiyosaki

#81. We keep on being told that religion, whatever its imperfections, at least instills morality. On every side, there is conclusive evidence that the contrary is the case and that faith causes people to be more mean, more selfish, and perhaps above all, more stupid.

Christopher Hitchens

#82. I think, increasingly, despite what we are being told is an ever more open world of communication, there is a terrible alienation in the ordinary man between what he is being told and what he secretly believes.

John Le Carre

#83. I was always being told off at school. The teachers would say: 'Everyone's talking, but you're the one I can hear.'

Beth Ditto

#84. You're cute when you do that," he called to me.
"When I do what?"
"Turn in a circle like that. It's kind of penguin-y."
"Great," I called back. "Just what every girl dreams of being told by their inhumanly attractive, immortal vampire protector: they look kind of 'penguin-y.

Temple West

#85. When I was younger, I was always being told I had a period face, but 'Bel Ami' was my first shot at it.

Holliday Grainger

#86. When you spend your entire life as a child actress, being told where to go and where to stand, you're performing constantly for people. It definitely breeds the kind of person who's dependent on other people's approval.

Kirsten Dunst

#87. An expression crept over Asher's face that was not unlike that of a lonely child being told that Santa had not in fact been strangled to death in an alley in New Orleans

Warren Ellis

#88. Is it true that some stories only just manage to be born? Or do these stories always seek their own path into the world and do they always, eventually, find a way of being told?

Benny Lindelauf

#89. He had seen the whole Universe stretching to infinity around him - everything. And with it had come the clear and extraordinary knowledge that he was the most important thing in it. Having a conceited ego is one thing. Actually being told by a machine is another.

Douglas Adams

#90. More than anything else, we need in this society the opportunity for people to tell us what they think without being told that they're either dumb, or stupid, or uninformed.

Brian Lamb

#91. I have a long history of being told I have no rhythm, and of people saying 'I've heard chickens sing better than that'.

Mary Margaret O'Hara

#92. How conscience tells us that we ought to be fair, nobody knows. This we can say: we don't know it just from being told, we don't know it from the five senses, and we don't know it by inference from prior knowledge. We just know it. The knowledge is underived.

J. Budziszewski

#93. Being told that you are good at banter is like being told that you are a good person.

Dar Williams

#94. Buying things is only sometimes about owning the things. Buying often is simply about what 50 Cent observed: being ABLE to buy. Having less means hearing "No, you cannot have that," and we loathe being told what we can and cannot do.

Harry Beckwith

#95. If we're being told to do stupid or cruel things, then it is morally correct to disobey.

Martin Firrell

#96. Old stories have a habit of being told and retold and changed. Each subsequent storyteller puts his or her mark upon it. Whatever truth the story once had is buried in bias and embellishment. The reasons do not matter as much as the story itself.

Erin Morgenstern

#97. I was so tired of being told reasonable, practical things whenever something went wrong with my life.

Richelle Mead

#98. Sadly, I haven't been able to find my earliest stories, but the impact of being told by someone important to me that I could do something special is immeasurable.

Doreen Cronin

#99. A game one of my sisters will play with me in my first year of being alive is called Good Baby, Bad Baby. This consists of being told I am a good baby until I smile and laugh, then being told I am a bad baby until I burst into tears. This training will stand me in good stead all through my life.

Ali Smith

#100. You mustn't tell your dreams. Miss Testvalley says nothing bores people so much as being told other people's dreams. Nan said nothing, but an iron gate seemed to clang shut in her - the gate that was so often slammed by careless hands. As if anyone could be bored by such dreams as hers!

Edith Wharton