Quotes About People Telling You What To Do

#1. Only very odd people don't realize that truth-telling is always a relative value.

John Gardner

#2. I consider myself a lyricist first and foremost, but if you get something else out of what I do, that's fine too. I'm not sitting back here telling people how they have to take my stuff. We just want to play music, and hope that people like it.

John Darnielle

#3. Do you know what people really want? Everyone, I mean. Everybody in the world is thinking: I wish there was just one other person I could really talk to, who could really understand me, who'd be kind to me. That's what people really want, if they're telling the truth.

Doris Lessing

#4. I think when you have a disability people are always putting limitations on you, telling you, even in a nice way, what you can't do. My attitude to that has always been: You can't tell me that. I'll show you.

Louise Sauvage

#5. I'm not in the business of telling people what to do. I'm much more in the business of describing things, situations and stuff like that and leaving them out there, and you can make up your minds about them.

Nick Cave

#6. When you first get opportunities, suddenly you get surrounded by a lot of people who want to make money off you but also are there to help. But they start telling you so much what you need to be and what you need to do to maintain some idea of career maintenance.

Brad Pitt

#7. I don't have a message. You already have all these people telling you how to live, who to be, what to wear, what to drive, what drugs to do - I just want people to see what I see.

Vince Staples

#8. No one can learn to love by following a manual and no one can learn to write by following a course. I'm not telling you to find people with different skills from yourself, because writing is no different from any other activity done with joy and enthusiasm.

Paulo Coelho

#9. I'm always fighting with profanity and Christian comedy. I'm telling you, it's always a fight. Because my father said to me, he said, 'Well, Kym, I feel like comics and people that use profanity, you have a lack of vocabulary, actually, a whole lot.'

Kym Whitley

#10. I think I was shy as a young woman and realized that photography was an ideal way of expressing myself, of telling people what was going on without having to talk.

Martine Franck

#11. Look, I don't know who has been telling you over the years that you aren't worthy of love and happiness, but they're idiots. We all deserve it. And if people get hurt along the way, that's life. We've all been hurt. Doesn't that make love more crucial to our lives?

Karina Halle

#12. There's a difference between standing up and telling people what you're planning to do and standing up and going and accomplishing something.

Paul Stanley

#13. I am in a very peculiar business: I travel all over the world telling people what they should already know.

James Randi

#14. Lahiri's characters, just like people all around us, are constantly telling each other important things, but not necessarily in words.

Will Schwalbe

#15. Standing behind a kitchen counter telling people about what ingredients to put in a pot didn't feel right.

Trisha Yearwood

#16. Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.

Rose Tremain

#17. My locker room is serious. It is quiet. No one smiles. I don't like people telling jokes in my locker room. Now is not a time to tell jokes. From the minute we leave my hotel room, do not fuck around. The time for fucking around is over. Some serious shit is about to happen.

Ronda Rousey

#18. Everybody that's living in this earth is living in a situation. It's not narrow-minded to the point where everybody is serious and nobody has a personality. I think people die telling jokes.

Mike Epps

#19. You have people telling you how good you are and all of a sudden, you might start believing it and forget what it takes to be good.

Lou Lamoriello

#20. Prophets of doom have always taken risks in terms of ridicule and humiliation. If you stand on a street corner holding up a sign that reads 'The End Is Near,' passersby will laugh and heckle. People will say you're like Chicken Little, running around telling people the sky is falling.

Robert Kiyosaki

#21. Personally, I felt terrible for telling Truth my name was Schnitzeldoodle. I still think about it. Sometimes I just have to rock myself back and forth and say, You've offended so many people at this point. Don't try to keep track now, girl.

Chelsea Handler

#22. The point here is what makes human beings different from other creatures is our ability to use language. We can use words to express ourselves in very eloquent and complex ways. We grow up telling and listening to stories. That's what turns us into the people we are.

Flemming Rose

#23. I have advice for new writers, first of all, at any time in the history of publishing in my experience, there will be endless number people telling you that you can't do what you are trying to do. You won't succeed, there's something else you should be doing.

Dean Koontz

#24. Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can't see watches you.

Dorothea Lange

#25. When you're doing a film, people are always telling you exactly what to do. Literally, your own decisions are taken away from you.

Ben Barnes

#26. I never know what people want to hear when they say that stuff. And it's not like anything about me is interesting or nothing. "Have you always lived in Cambridge?" I nodded. "Do you live alone?" I nodded again. So then he gave up on twenty questions and started telling me about himself.

J.L. Merrow

#27. I remember when I was little, much younger than I was when I started modeling, people always said, 'Oh, you should be a model.' But I didn't like people telling me what to do ... But I didn't plan to transform into an actress, either. It just happened.

Tao Okamoto

#28. At the end of the day, you have to make sure you're at least listening to what your head is telling you, what your heart is telling you. That's hard to do when there are a million other people shouting as loud as they can.

Bode Miller

#29. If you do not believe that listening to the best people in the business telling you what they know will help you succeed, then you have allowed your ego and arrogance to get the best of you.

Andy Albright

#30. In the event of a total loss of direction in life, be sure to sort our your own shit before you start telling people what to do.

A.C. Ping

#31. I've rarely kept my distance from kind of - I don't know if we can call it politics, but kind of, civic engagement and that kind of thing, except I tended to think, 'Well, do it yourself before you start telling other people what they should be doing.'

David Byrne

#32. Well, I hate small talk, and I refuse to become one of those old people who spends all their time telling young people how much better and cheaper things used to be. What do you care if the subway used to cost five cents? It don't anymore.

Helen Cox

#33. We have a lot of In-SPECK-tor Gadgets in the body of Christ not qualified to remove specks! What do I look like telling you to take a bath if I stink? What do you look like telling me to brush my teeth when your breath smells horrible? Jesus would answer, "You look like a Hypocrite!

Sandra M. Michelle

#34. Life is diverse. Living is to live with difference. Anyone telling you that difference should be stamped out is stamping out life. Those people insisting that there are black and white answers to the difficult questions are stamping out the diversity that is inherent in life.

Omar Saif Ghobash

#35. That's possible to likely. We're involved, you and me. I'm telling you what I'm going to do because I figure when people are involved, when they matter, they tell each other.

Nora Roberts

#36. Where do people get off telling people what to do? It's their bodies. If you legalized sex work and legally protected the sex workers, you wouldn't see anything like human trafficking. All of that would be obliterated.

Margaret Cho

#37. The public is never wrong. When people don't respond to what you do, they're telling you something loud and clear. You're just not listening.

50 Cent

#38. With Twitter, it's a little harder to tell jokes that somebody hasn't heard already. You have all these people out there sharing their opinions and telling jokes in real time, and by the time you get on, somebody's already done some version of what you're trying to do.

Frank Caliendo

#39. Whenever we do voter registration, we ask, 'Why haven't you voted before?' The response is often, 'No one's asked us.' It's not about telling people what to do - it's about sharing what they can do.

Rosario Dawson

#40. As a director, you have to know what actors are doing. You're the one telling them what to do. The actors' job is to come prepared to the set, but sometimes, if they're beginning actors or people who are non-actors, you have to teach them how to act.

Eli Roth

#41. There is nothing worse then being surrounded by a bunch of people telling you to do what is right, when they can't define that definition, without a lot of hatred and judgment behind it.

Shannon L. Alder

#42. To have integrity one must be consistently honest and trustworthy in everything one does ... When you have integrity, people know you will do what you know is right ... Its knowing what you have to do without someone telling you to do it. It is the core of a person's-and a company's- reputation.

Richard M. Kovacevich

#43. Even if you need, and want, a second opinion, it can be dangerous to have people telling you what they think you ought to add, or cut, before you've even finished telling your story. One loses heart; one loses energy and interest. Or at least I do.

Donna Tartt

#44. If you fear that defending your boundaries is being controlling, don't worry. There is a difference between being controlling and having boundaries. Controlling people is about telling them what to do. Setting boundaries is about saying what you do or do not want to happen to you.

Adelyn Birch

#45. I got to the point where I was fed up with so many people telling me how and who I was supposed to be.

Estelle

#46. For some people they say, it's about wish fulfillment, it's about the things you are never able to do in your day you are actually fulfilling at night. There are other people who will say that it's actually telling you something.

Shelby Harris

#47. The balance when you're catching people up, and the craft of what we do as actors, is to try to make sure that the exposition sounds like thought and dialogue, and a plan or a problem or something that is motivationally induced, rather than just telling the audience information.

Jack Coleman

#48. I would prefer it if people thought that I didn't work hard, that I just played the guitar for three minutes a week and was like, 'Check out this song - what do you think?' That would be ideal. I would prefer telling people that I'm just truly talented.

Julian Casablancas

#49. It's not terrible, people telling you you're great; what's terrible is when you start believing it.

Woody Harrelson

#50. I love nonfiction the most. It's hard to find a good nonfiction story, and that's why I'm not as prolific, I guess, as a lot of people. They're hard to find. I love the nonfiction writer Ben Macintyre. I think he's terrific at the form of telling a story in a cinematic way.

Robert Kurson

#51. Putting people in a room and strapping wires to their wrist to find out if I make them tingle when I'm telling them about Beirut is a long way from Edward R. Murrow.

Linda Ellerbee

#52. If I would have listened to other people back in 2000 telling me I should have stopped playing basketball because of a kidney disease, I wouldn't have won a world championship.

Alonzo Mourning

#53. What is the good of telling a community that it has every liberty except the liberty to make laws? The liberty to make laws is what constitutes a free people.

G.K. Chesterton

#54. When I was young and crazy, I was young and crazy. It can be hard enough just to BE in your teens and 20s. Then add fame, money, access, and every single person telling you that you're the greatest person who ever was, and it can be a recipe for disaster. Some people literally don't survive it.

Rob Lowe

#55. When I was small, I didn't even know that I was a kid
with special needs. How did I find out? By other people telling me that I was
different from everyone else, and that this was a problem.

Naoki Higashida

#56. Memory is the way we keep telling ourselves our stories - and telling other people a somewhat different version of our stories.

Alice Munro

#57. It's like when you're on hold and a recorded voice comes on telling you how much the company values you as a customer. Really? Then maybe you should hire some more support people so I don't have to wait thirty minutes to get help.

Jason Fried

#58. I smoke weed.It's not an addiction. It's something I wanna do. It's not smart though. It's not good for my body but I'm doing it. I'm not telling people to do it.

Schoolboy Q

#59. 'Whale Talk' is a tough book, but it is also a compassionate book about telling the truth and about redemption. I didn't draw the tough parts out of thin air; they are stories handed to me by people in pain.

Chris Crutcher

#60. Ach, people are always telling us not to do things" said Rob Anybody, "that's how we ken the most interesting things to do.

Terry Pratchett

#61. The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don't expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us ...

Miriam Makeba

#62. There are more people involved in telling a story than the writer.

Cecelia Ahern

#63. There is a "yoga body" aesthetic, which is long and sinewy. I am curvy. I get praised on a regular basis, with people telling me, "Wow, you're so brave," simply for showing my curvy body. Being brave is going to war; being curvy is not brave. We need to be careful with how we use our words.

Kathryn Budig

#64. Most people don't care if you're telling them the truth or if you're telling them a lie, as long as they're entertained by it.

Tom Waits

#65. Billy Crystal knows how to make people laugh. He's got 30 years on stage ... there's no telling him what's funny.

Harold Ramis

#66. I can't imagine people telling me what to do - I just can't imagine it.

Jane Campion

#67. I'm a conduit for telling people's stories. It's a privilege.

Tori Amos

#68. When people were telling me 'God is watching you' ...

Pete Holmes

#69. Everyone's entitled to express their political beliefs. I don't presume to tell anybody who to vote for. I am comfortable telling people what my opinions are.

Ben Affleck

#70. You've got to trust the ground you're standing on and the work you've done in telling your story. The goal should be to bring those thousands of people - viewers - together and make them one. When you feel that happening, it's usually in silence, not applause or laughter.

Kevin Spacey

#71. Marriage is not mainly about being or staying in love. It's mainly about telling the truth with our lives. It's about portraying something true about Jesus Christ and the way He relates to his people. It is about showing in real life the glory of the gospel.

John Piper

#72. People always talk about how great it is to get older. All I saw were more rules and more adults telling me what I could and couldn't do, in the name of what's " good for me." Yeah, well, asparagus is good for me, but it still makes me want to throw up.

James Patterson

#73. I think repeating yourself is a sign of old age, telling the same joke again and again. Especially if they're jokes that don't make people laugh.

Simon Le Bon

#74. It's the big question of every TV show, right, where you have these two people who it's clear the world wants to put them together and everyone wants to see them together, but also when you're telling these stories you can't throw these people together immediately.

Patrick J. Adams

#75. I'm not telling people to go vegan overnight.

Heather Mills

#76. If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth.

Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

#77. Writing good editorials is chiefly telling the people what they think, not what you think.

Arthur Brisbane

#78. I would never dream of telling people how to dress. but I do say to them, however you are dressing, accept responsibility for it. And also, unless asked, I don't judge. And if asked to judge - I would approach it socratically, I would approach it with questions.

Tim Gunn

#79. What the results are telling them is that the most money is spent in volume by young people. They also see young people as the consumers of tomorrow and are trying to capture their attention from their competitors.

Marlo Thomas

#80. You want to have a song that people will listen to and go, 'Oh, yeah! That reminds me of something in my life,' or, 'something I'm currently going through,' or maybe something happens later and you hear the song and go, 'Wow! That really was telling a story that I can relate to now.' That's my hope.

Pegi Young

#81. People want biography. People want memoir. They want you to tell them that the story you're telling them is true. The thing I'm telling you is true, but it did not always happen to me.

Dorothy Allison

#82. It's insane that, since the Beatles and Dylan, it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves. It's that ridiculous, teenage idea that when Mick Jagger sings, he's telling you something about his own life. It's so arrogant to think that people would want to know about it anyway!

Brian Eno

#83. When you're eleven you think every idea is born with you, that no one ever tried it the right way before. Your example, your own honesty, will make you a hero to everyone who knows you - and better, it will make people come to their senses and stop telling vicious lies about each other.

Elana Dykewomon

#84. A lot of my humor centers on the act of telling jokes and I think this can prevent certain audiences from suspending their feeling of disbelief. It might piss a few people off, but I can't help it.

Michael Showalter

#85. But while my inner voice was clearly telling me I was at my core an entrepreneur, it's inconvenient to decide at twenty-three that you can't really work for other people.

Kelly Cutrone

#86. Like JJ Abrams, creators just want to tell a story and entertain people. So why only focus in one way of telling it?Give readers another way to connect with your story. Entertainment does not need to be contained in one medium. Think about telling your story in many mediums.

Anne-Rae Vasquez

#87. When I am telling it, it doesn't seem as if it was only made up. It seems more real than you are
more real than the schoolroom. I feel as if I were all the people in the story
one after the other. It is queer.

Frances Hodgson Burnett

#88. President Obama keeps telling us that he is "creating jobs." But more and more Americans have no jobs. The unemployment rate has declined slightly, but only because many people have stopped looking for jobs. You are only counted as unemployed if you are still looking for a job.

Thomas Sowell