Tell Them The Truth Quotes

#1. Maybe the goal in America is to have an easy life, and so we find it too disgraceful to tell the truth. I meet a lot of people in my line of work, and I can say with utmost certainty
life is pretty hard for almost all of them.

Matthew Quick

#2. I whispered across the bars to Jackaby as I rose, "Shall I tell them the truth?"
"Have you killed anyone?" he asked, quietly.
"No, of course not!"
"Then I can't imagine why you shouldn't.

William Ritter

#3. 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

#4. What I do with my kids is I tell them I love them every day, but also I tell them the truth.

Todd Bridges

#5. Tell the truth, because sooner or later the public will find out anyway. And if the public doesn't like what you are doing, change your policies and bring them into line with what people want.

Ivy Lee

#6. I kind of wanted to tell them that. Like, it's okay, I know I'm weird-looking, take a look, I don't bite. Hey, the truth is, if a Wookiee started going to the school all of a sudden, I'd be curious, I'd probably stare a bit!

R.J. Palacio

#7. But a funny thing happens when you tell a man that you don't want to get married: they don't believe you. They think you're lying to yourself or to them or you're trying to trick them in some way and you end up being made to feel worse for just telling the truth.

Jami Attenberg

#8. Tell them stories. They need the truth you must tell them true stories, and everything will be well, just tell them stories.

Philip Pullman

#9. BELINDA: People say you shouldn't speak ill of the dead. I say tell the truth. The dead will know what God will tell them. So start talking.

Billy London

#10. Women usually tell that version of the truth which flatters them the most.

Valentin V.

#11. When everyone in America knows you're in a dreadful position, admit you're in a dreadful position. Don't lie about it and make them roll their eyes, tell the truth and make them blink.

Peggy Noonan

#12. Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib.

Kilroy J. Oldster

#13. Teachers, let me tell you, are born deceivers of the lowest sort, since what they want from life is impossible - time-freed, existential youth forever. It commits them to terrible deceptions and departures from the truth. And literature, being lasting, is their ticket.

Richard Ford

#14. I use a lot of humor, and I follow the saying that if you want to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh first, otherwise, they will shoot you. So I can tell you a joke and maybe you will laugh at the beginning. But it's not about telling jokes.

Sayed Kashua

#15. The point is not to give people a break. The point is to tell all the truth you can bear about them and not despise them, not to be a kumbaya kind of guy.

Rob Nilsson

#16. Why do people complain when your crabby but the moment there crabby you tell them to stop moaning they moan so fuckin unreal

Emma Mckenzie

#17. People want to know if I have a moral standpoint that they should be picking up on, and the truth is, I don't. I don't want people to think that I'm trying to tell them to feel a certain way. I think that's cheap filmmaking.

Jason Reitman

#18. I want women writers to write boldly, wildly, deeply. I want them to feel really liberated to tell the brutal truth, however they see that truth and are moved to tell it.

Julianna Baggott

#19. Love people enough to tell them the truth and respect them enough to trust that they can handle it.

Iyanla Vanzant

#20. If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them.

Pietro Aretino

#21. Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

Robert Anton Wilson

#22. People shouldn't lie to each other to begin with. People shouldn't have to fear hell in order to tell the truth. They should fear that their lies will ruin relationships or get them in trouble, here now, on Earth, with the people they love.

Renee Carlino

#23. If you are going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you.

Oscar Wilde

#24. When one lives in a society where people can no longer rely on the institutions to tell them the truth, the truth must come from culture and art.

John Trudell

#25. Let me tell ye in your sleep how much I love you. For there's no so much I can be saying to ye while ye wake, but the same poor words, again and again. While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them. Go

Diana Gabaldon

#26. Poets are all who love, who feel great truths, And tell them; and the truth of truths is love.

Philip James Bailey

#27. The forces are there, we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be.

Unknown

#28. I have discovered the art of deceiving diplomats. I tell them the truth and they never believe me.

Camillo Di Cavour

#29. To tell the truth, I don't read children's books. I'm an adult. I just write them.

William Steig

#30. Yet in the midst of all their prosperity, princes in this respect seem to me most unfortunate, because, having no one to tell them truth, they are forced to receive flatterers for friends.

Erasmus

#31. I knew enough about adults to know that if did tell them what had happened, I would not be believed. Adults rarely seemed to believe me when I told the truth anyway.

Neil Gaiman

#32. Don't worry over what the newspapers say. I don't. Why should anyone else? I told the truth to the newspaper correspondents - but when you tell the truth to them they are at sea.

William Howard Taft

#33. When I was very little, my mother used to say there was something of my grandmother in me, in how I tell stories the way I need them to be and not the way they actually happened.

Danielle Evans

#34. Sometimes, you can hurt another person by being true to yourself, but in the longterm you are doing both of you a favour. You can also hurt them by just being a selfish bitch and there is no excuse for that. Sometimes it is quite difficult to tell the two situations apart.

Kate Kerrigan

#35. The truth is, whoever I've dated, if I've ever wanted to talk about them on stage, I've asked them first. And I've gotten their permission to tell a story or talk about them before I do it.

Amy Schumer

#36. I tell my micro students everything I teach them is important, but the truth is that some things are more useful than others, and opportunity cost is near the top.

Emily Oster

#37. People usually feel funny, smile and laugh when I tell them
about my strong belief in the very existence of prehistoric
advanced technology and great civilizations of wilier races.
I just can't wait to see their faces at time the truth is revealed.

Toba Beta

#38. The Republican National Committee hired me, and they hired me because they wanted someone who could look members straight in the eye and tell them the truth.

Frank Luntz

#39. There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them.

Greta Garbo

#40. It's easy to tell someone something you know they want to hear. What's not so easy is following up on those easy words and making what you said come to life. It's in taking the words and turning them into actions where most people give up and bail out.

Melyssa Winchester

#41. Stories have endings; that's why we tell them, for reassurance that there is meaning in our lives. But like a diagnosis, a story can become a prison, a straight road mapped out by the people who went before. Stories are not the truth.

Sarah Moss

#42. Pope John Paul II spoke with a lot of clarity and consistency. But he always spoke with immense compassion. He's the one who said the best way to love somebody is to tell them the truth. So, he did that well.

Chris Matthews

#43. You need to see what the actor needs. This one wants to be talked to privately. That one doesn't mind if you block it for them. Just tell me the truth and I'll adapt to it.

Penny Marshall

#44. A huge insight was the power of simply telling employees the truth. If things aren't going well, tell them.

David M. Cote

#45. How impossible it is to forget the stories we tell ourselves, even when the truth should super-cede them.

Stephanie Danler

#46. Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.

Ellen Gilchrist

#47. You ask me, and I'll tell you the truth - anything out of people's usual expectations throws them off track.

J.A. Redmerski

#48. Do you know the feeling you get when you are awakened in the middle of a dream? The dream story is still real and full of color, but the waking world is rushing back into your mind. And for a moment both worlds are true, and you cannot quite tell them apart.

Shannon Hale

#49. If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.

George Bernard Shaw

#50. One of the nicest things you can do to kick-start your children's day is to tell them honestly they look nice as they head out the door. This easy, five-second exchange says to your child: I see you; I notice you; I love you.

Molly Friedenfeld

#51. I'll tell you what I want. Magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misinterpret things to them. I don't tell the truth. I tell what ought to be truth. And if that is sinful, then let me be damned for it! - Don't turn the light on!

Tennessee Williams

#52. I don't want any yes-men around me. I want everybody to tell me the truth even if it costs them their jobs.

Samuel Goldwyn

#53. We're alive. We have words and shapes and ideas. We will throw them at you when you do not believe. We will throw our love and our hate and our failure and success. We'll split in two right in front of you and be our best and our worst. We'll lie and tell the truth.

A.S. King

#54. You know, I think what the American people want more than anything else right now is someone who's just going to look them in the eye and tell them the truth, even some truths that they don't like. And - but they have to believe the person's speaking from their heart and are authentic.

Chris Christie

#55. Never tell an unnecessary lie; the truth has great authority. The cleverest murders have been caught, not because they told the one essential lie, but because they continued to lie about unimportant detail when the truth could have done them no harm.

P.D. James

#56. Effective leaders make it easy for people around them to tell the truth, to be candid and open.

Al Ritter

#57. Sometimes people ask you a question with their eyes begging you to not tell them the truth.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

#58. Everybody has a Big Momma: the mother or the grandmother who tells it like it is, keeps it real with them, isn't afraid to tell you the truth about yourself.

Martin Lawrence

#59. Ignorance breeds fear. Tell people the truth. Trust them to keep their heads.

Olivia Manning

#60. I learned a long time ago to be honest when I'm talking to other artists. Up-and-coming artists used to come and say something, they would have a demo reel, and I would try to tell them the truth. I don't go up and say something unless I really feel it.

Common

#61. People say children are charming because they tell the truth. That's a lie. I've got five of them. They only tell the truth if they're in pain.

Bill Cosby

#62. Just tell the truth and you're home free. If there are amends to be made, you make them. You own it and move on.

Charlie Sheen

#63. [T]hat they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalize them. They'll tell a story better than ours, and of course they'll believe themselves more than they would us ...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#64. It is a rule of mine never to ask unsolicited questions of people over twenty-one. I am only giving them the option of lying if they choose to. They would tell me the truth without my asking if they wanted me to know. To me that's fair enough.

Dorothy West

#65. It's really ridiculous to assume that people are improved by hearing someone tell the truth about them.

Christa Wolf

#66. The thing is, I don't even hate cops. To tell you the truth, I actually feel a little sorry for them.

Markus Zusak

#67. Suttas are not meant to be 'sacred scriptures' that tell us what to believe. One should read them, listen to them, think about them, contemplate them, and investigate the present reality, the present experience with them. Then, and only then, can one insightfully know the truth beyond words.

Ajahn Sumedho

#68. I go all around and try to tell them. And they laugh. I can't make them understand anything. No matter what I say I can't seem to make them see the truth.

Carson McCullers

#69. It is a mystery, and to tell the truth, I am intrigued by mysteries even if this is to be my last week of enjoying them. I would welcome some glimmer of understanding but, failing that, working on the puzzle will suffice.

Dan Simmons

#70. The truth of course was otherwise, but Lecha had never felt she owed anyone the truth, unless it was truth about their own lives, and then they had to pay her to tell them.

Leslie Marmon Silko

#71. Polling only works in a country without a depressed, frightened populace. Where the public trusts authorities enough to tell them the truth without fear of retribution.

Rick Perlstein

#72. Why don't boys like girls as they are?' 'They bore easy cause the so deadhead. Sometimes they want you mami, sometimes sis, sometimes lovergirl. You game with boys you got to know who you are and not let them tell you'.

Jack Womack

#73. I've convinced myself - I hope I'm right - that children despair of you if you don't tell them the truth.

Maurice Sendak

#74. They tried to tell us that what happened to them would happen to us, too, but we could not hear the message. Mistook it for nostalgia, when they were speaking prophecy.

Brian Francis Slattery

#75. The stories people tell you about themselves seem to retain the possibility of being false. But what you discover about them by yourself seems to be the truth.

John Verdon

#76. And it was so special, and to tell you the truth that's how I feel about the whole thing, I mean when I meet someone that has watched the show, and it has brought such joy to them, it just makes you feel so good.

David Selby

#77. If you don't want your children to know the truth about life don't send 'em to the theater to see Moms 'cause I'm gonna tell them THE TRUTH, hear?

Moms Mabley

#78. Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.

Swami Vivekananda

#79. There's a nastiness out there that wants to harm me with words. These are my enemies - the ideologues, the populists, the columnists who don't like the fact that I take them on toe-to-toe. What I try to do is tell the truth. It's not the coin of the realm in politics.

Ed Koch

#80. It's easy to lie with statistics, but it's hard to tell the truth without them.

Charles Wheelan

#81. It doesn't really matter in the end. Most people I talk to don't take writing seriously. If I tell them I'm an aspiring author, they get that "yeah right" look on their face, which is usually followed by "good luck with that.

Karina Halle

#82. People only tell lies when the truth is disagreeable to them, or frightens them, or to cover sin.

Anne Perry

#83. Everyone thinks I'm crazy, you know, because I can't tell them the truth; which is, that I'm driven crazy by all these thoughts, all these heads.

Charlaine Harris

#84. There is something more than violence that Nasheenians taught me, and that is the awful brutality of speaking absolute truth. I propose that we begin to unmask ourselves. We speak the truth of ourselves. We tell them just how many of us there are.

Kameron Hurley

#85. There's no reason to be offended if someone is being honest and tactful. To tell the truth in kindness is a huge favor. To help people avoid the wrong path, or get on the right one, can save them years of frustration. In the end, candor grows respect.

Nancy K. Eberhardt

#86. How do you choose your books?' my friends had asked. Less than a week into my project, I can now tell them the beginning of the truth. I don't always choose the books, I'll say. Sometimes the books choose me.

Sara Nelson

#87. If you were lucky, very lucky indeed, there were one or two people in your life who you could tell the unvarnished truth too, shell and egg. And that these people held the essence of you inside them. The rest would be conversations that ended when night fell, or the dinner part ended.

Julia Gregson

#88. Of course, no government official will ever tell you that the cities may be making the people in them ill.

Steven Magee

#89. Black-and-white photos tell the truth. That's why insurance companies use them.

Allan Sekula

#90. Your mind and a computer have one thing in common: neither of them know the difference between the truth ... and what you tell it.

Ken Blanchard

#91. When you have confidence, when you feel loved by people, you can tell them the truth. It's important that I can say the photo isn't beautiful or the photo shoot sucks.

Carine Roitfeld

#92. We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.

Anne Roiphe

#93. The cruelest thing you can do to an artist is tell them their work is flawless when it isn't

Yahtzee Croshaw

#94. There were people who lied for gain, people who lied from pain, people who lied simply because the concept of telling the truth was utterly alien to them ... and then there were people who lied because they were waiting for it to be time to tell the truth.

Stephen King

#95. I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic! I try to give that to people. I misrepresent things to them. I don't tell the truth, I tell what ought to be the truth. And it that's sinful, then let me be damned for it!

Tennessee Williams

#96. Some would ask what country am I from? We ara supposed to tell the truth, [so] we tell them India. Some thought it was Indiana, not India! Some did not know where India is. I said the country next to Pakistan.

Thomas L. Friedman

#97. If you really want to help the people, tell them the truth! They may not like it and they may even hate you; yet again, tell them the truth!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#98. Seven billion who need to be kept happy, and docile, until the end. How do you do that? What's the best way to calm down a scared kid, get them to go back to sleep? Tell them a story. Some shit about Jesus or whatever.

Neal Stephenson

#99. If you're a coach, and you don't have trust with players, you've got no chance, and your credibility is zero. And that's why it's so important to tell them the truth. If you have something that you're upset about, tell them the truth. If they're doing something wrong, tell them the truth.

Tony La Russa

#100. Men - not just babies like you, but old men, too - they always need to have a woman tell them the truth. Les hommes, ils sont impossibles.

James Baldwin