Quotes & Sayings About Not Telling The Whole Truth

I'll never speak to another person without telling the truth. I've been a cruel man in my time, I've been a devious man in my time, like everybody else. I've told lies in my time. But I've seen enough suffering to experiment with the truth. — Jack Kirby

Men are sometimes hanged for telling the truth. — Joan Of Arc

I knew she was not telling me the truth. I asked her again what had happned because I don't like it when she keeps something from me. She's not allowed. Because when she lies, someting inside me changes, and it's like the WHOLE WORLD is one way and I'm the other. Like I can't trust a thing, as if the whole world knows a secret I don't and I'm running around from person to person asking them to tell me but they won't and the more I don't know what is going on the more scared I become and I feel myself drifting farther and farther away from everyone. — Jack Gantos

We're in a place where no words can tell the truth about what happened ... But they have to. This was hell on earth. — Aleksander Kwasniewski

If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

Since spies must survive by telling lies, it can be hard to know when they are telling the truth. — Stephen Grey

He was telling me then that lyrics have truth
behind them, because they come from somewhere
inside the person who wrote them. I look back
down at the page. — Colleen Hoover

The key to getting people to follow you is not telling them the whole truth. It's to make them think you are going to give them everything they want. Give them food, jobs, happiness that had been absent. Promise them a stronger, better country. It's all about the bait. Then once you have them on your side, take away choice. Keep filling them up with false promises and feed them full of lies and propaganda. When — Katherine King

You have a foul mouth. And to think you kiss your children with it." "According to my mates, my mouth is perfect. And there's nothing dirty about telling the truth. — Eve Langlais

There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you. — Niccolo Machiavelli

For me, exploration is about that journey to the interior, into your own heart. I'm always wondering, how will I act at my moment of truth? Will I rise up and do what's right, even if every fiber of my being is telling me otherwise? — Ann Bancroft

I scrutinized his face for honesty and then looked away. He was either a lunatic, a really good liar, or he was actually telling the truth. — Amy Astorga

In Advance of All Parting is a tough, unsentimental examination of marital grief. Musically elegant and inventive, understated and passionate, the poems give us a profound glimpse into how the events of a life can form a center of gravity that fixes the self in its force field. Theres a cold, truth-telling clarity about them that makes them as unsettling as they are beautiful. Ansie Baird has created a richly-drawn world in which this elemental drama plays out, and the result is vivid, startling poems in which pain has left its indelible tracks. — Chase Twichell

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

By telling lie you can hide the truth, but u can't reject it. — Munendra Dwivedi

I consider telling him the truth. That if I were dead like Snow White and he kissed me like that, surely my heart would kick back to life — Colleen Hoover

I knew that his confession would be a tremendous relief to him but a burden to me. Such information, once shared, can never be retracted. — Karen Essex

The story of undocumented immigrants in this country is not just about undocumented immigrants. It's about the country as a whole, and it's about us being able to tell the truth about where we are with this issue because we haven't been telling the truth about where we are with this issue. — Jose Antonio Vargas

Johanna sat by the fire every night and worked on her tapestry. Dumfries waited until she was settled in her chair and then draped himself across her feet. It became a ritual for Alex to squeeze himself up next to her and fall asleep during her stories about fierce warriors and fair maidens. Johanna's tales all had a unique twist, for none of the heroines she told stories about ever needed to be rescued by their knights in shining armor. More often than not, the fair maidens rescued their knights.
Gabriel couldn't take issue with his wife. She was telling Alex the truth. It was a fact that maidens could rescue mighty, arrogant warriors. Johanna had certainly rescued him from a bleak, cold existence. She'd given him a family and a home. She was his love, his joy, his companion.
She was his saving grace. — Julie Garwood

All propaganda is lies, even when one is telling the truth. — George Orwell

And still the text will remain, if it is really cryptic and parodying (and I tell you that it is so through and through. I might as well tell you since it won't be of any help to you. Even my admission can very well be a lie because there is dissimulation only if one tells the truth, only if one tells that one is telling the truth), still the text will remain indefinitely open, cryptic and parodying. — Jacques Derrida

The conventional wisdom is - people say this all the time - you should only write something when you're far enough away from it that you can have a perspective. But that's not true. That's a story that you're telling. The truth of it is here, right now. It's the only truth that we ever know. And I'm interested in that truth and the confusion being part of the experience and sorting it your way through and figuring it out. — Charlie Kaufman

I made myself a rule: write out of love. And when you love somebody, you have to tell the truth about who they are - not the cute "truth" in your head of who they are, the one where you did everything right and they did everything wrong. — Leigh Newman

I believe in telling the truth. — Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

All works of nonfiction, or memoir, have to first and foremost be art before they can be true. They have to be artful first before they can be truthful... If you emphasize the truth-telling at the expense of art, nobody is going to be interested in it. And if you sacrifice truth in the name of art, you risk triviality. There's a constant balance between those two. — Alan Shapiro

He would not mind hearing Petrus's story one day. But preferably not reduced to English. More and more he is convinced that English is an unfit medium for the truth of South Africa. Stretches of English code whole sentences long have thickened, lost their articulations, their articulateness, their articulatedness. Like a dinosaur expiring and settling in the mud, the language has stiffened. Pressed into the mold of English, Petrus's story would come out arthritic, bygone(117). — J.M. Coetzee

Far from being aloof or detached from power, the church is all about power - the end of power, meaning the purpose of power, the taming of power, and the unleashing of power for true flourishing. The church proclaims the true story of power. By telling the whole story from Genesis to Revelation, with its astonishing bookends of good, very good and glorious news, the church recognizes and affirms our human ambitions and aspirations, placing them in the context where they truly make sense and can find their rightful place. By telling the full truth about idolatry and injustice, not least by recalling the stories of how our own heroes fell into compromise and foolishness, the church makes clear just how damaging our pride is to ourselves, our neighbors and the whole groaning creation. And by recounting over and over the immense cost of redemption, the church leads us to abashed and grateful humility before the one who gave up everything for us. — Andy Crouch

A white person who claims to have no impediment of vision in this country is not, I think, telling the whole truth. And when it comes to race relations, not telling the whole truth about the fog one inhabits slows down the work of groping forward. — Naomi Wolf

What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this
two things: I crave truth. And I lie. — Tana French

The funny thin is, you say it like it's so unusual that you've only done it once. But I bet a whole lot of people go through their lives without ever telling the truth, not really. And they wake up in the same body and the same life every singe morning. — David Levithan

I can only answer that I tried to tell the truth and, if not be objective, at least be fair; history is not served when reporters prize trepidation and propriety over the robust journalistic duty to tell the whole story. — Randy Shilts

When you've been lied to your whole life by people, especially men, you learn how to read when people are telling the truth and when they're not. — Kelly Elliott

In representing criminal defendants especially guilty ones it is often necessary to take the offensive against the government: to put the government on trial for its misconduct. In law, as in sports, the best defense is often a good offense. The courtroom oath to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is applicable only to witnesses ... because the American justice system is built on a foundation of not telling the whole entire truth. — Alan Dershowitz

So many tankers come down with maintenance problems all at once. I do not think that the press is telling us the whole story. Then again, maybe they are just a little slow on the uptake. The truth will reveal that Allah has truly blessed us. — Christian F. Burton

The courtroom oath
"to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth"
is applicable only to witnesses. Defense attorneys, prosecutors, and judges don't take this oath
they couldn't! Indeed, it is fair to say the American justice system is built on the foundation of not telling the whole truth. It is the job of the defense attorney
especially when representing the guilty
to prevent, by all lawful means, the "whole truth" from coming out. — Jon Krakauer

Dimitri is dead," she said.
It was a statement, not a question, but she was looking to me for confirmation. I wondered if I'd given away something, some hint that there was still more to the story. Or maybe she just needed the certainty of those words. And for a moment, I considered telling them that Dimitri was dead. It was what the Academy would tell them, what the guardians would tell them. It would be easier on them ... but somehow, I couldn't stand to lie to them - even if it was a comforting lie. Dimitri would have wanted the whole truth, and his family would too.
"No," I said, and for a heartbeat, hope sprang up in everyone's faces - at least until I spoke again. "Dimitri's a Strigoi. — Richelle Mead

Just as there are legal guidelines concerning the police use of provocateurs, there must be limits to how far the media can go in setting up a misleading situation ... I, for one, can simply not accept that telling a lie is an acceptable way of reporting the truth ... Every poll of public opinion shows that there is a suspicion among the general public that the media do not tell the whole truth, or that they distort things, or that they exaggerate, or that they are biased. — Peter Robinson

There's an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don't help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don't help, tell better lies. — Joanne Harris

Above all, tell the truth. — Grover Cleveland

If people are always comfortable with you, you're probably not telling them the whole truth. — Aniekee Tochukwu Ezekiel

When I won the Oscar, there was something telling me 'this isn't the truth'. I had to get back to real work. — Juliette Binoche

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don't think God categorizes sins. — Joel Osteen

All I can hope to teach my son is to tell the truth and fear no man. — Edward R. Murrow

Livy." His voice deepened to nearly guttural. Desire unfurled in her abdomen. Then reality slammed her in the face.
"Are you glamoring me?" she asked, anger rippling along her skin.
His eyebrows drew down. "Glamoring?"
"Yeah. What vampires do." She put her hands on her hips. "Making me want you."
He chuckled again. "Oh, you want me, and it's all you. There's no such thing as glamoring."
Truth. She opened her senses, and he was definitely telling the truth. "Oh. — Rebecca Zanetti

The writer's job is to tell the truth, — Ernest Hemingway,

Please explain to me why John Kerry sounds more dickish telling the truth than Bush sounds when he's lying. How is that possible? — Jon Stewart

Mister Lipwig, the world lives between those who say it cannot be done and those who say that it can. And in my experience, those who say that it can be done are usually telling the truth. It's just a matter of thinking creatively. — Terry Pratchett

Bradley Cooper was an asshole, but he was - like Sidney Lumet, like George Clooney - the nicest guy in the world. I sound like the biggest ass-kisser ever. But I'm telling the truth, I swear to God! — Peter Jacobson

In order to deceive others, it is necessary also to deceive oneself. The actor playing Hamlet must indeed believe that he is the Prince of Denmark, though when he leaves the stage he will usually remember who he really is. On the other hand, when someone's entire life is based on pretense, they will seldom if ever return to reality. That is the secret of successful politicians, evangelists and confidence tricksters - they believe that they are telling the truth, even when they know that they have faked the evidence. Sincerity, my dear Julia, is a quality not to be trusted. — Sarah Caudwell

No blame should attach to telling the truth. But it does, it does. — Anita Brookner

Our biggest fear is not in expressing the truth but that we will be attacked or belittled because of our truth. — Kelli Wilson

So much relies on one person assuming the other is telling the truth. If a person can lie to you about one thing, he can lie about something else. — Meg Rosoff

The truth shouldn't be told only when it's convenient. Honesty must be a way of life. — Frank Sonnenberg

He knew she had been telling the truth when she told him she seldom asked for help. It was clear in her every interaction with him - in her speech , even in the way she held herself- that she was used to standing alone. — Stephen Lloyd Jones

As a writer I want everybody to get a chance to voice their opinions. If each character thinks that they're telling the truth, then it's valid. Then at the end of the film, I leave it up to the audience to decide who did the right thing. — Spike Lee

Women have a hard enough time in this world: telling them the truth would be too cruel. — H.L. Mencken

As a journalist I'm asked whether I make things up. As a novelist I'm accused of telling the truth. — Lennox Morrison

Because people who talk about their dreams are actually trying to tell you things about themselves they'd never admit in normal conversation. It's a way for people to be honest without telling the truth. — Chuck Klosterman

Bill Clinton is a liar, a perverted kind of a guy anyway, and he is always stroking black folks rather than telling them the truth. — Tucker Carlson

None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth. — Mark Twain