Quotes & Sayings About Plain Speaking

Really, we're fighting because she raised me to never forget I was born on parole, which means no black hoodies in wrong neighborhoods, no jogging at night, hands in plain sight at all times in public, no intimate relationships with white women, never driving over the speed limit or doing those rolling stops at stop signs, always speaking the King's English in the presence of white folks, never being outperformed in school or in public by white students, and, most importantly, always remembering that no matter what, the worst of white folks will do anything to get you. — Kiese Laymon

When I was a child, to call someone 'black' was an insult, a curse word, something that made you fight.
But to me it contains all of the history of oppression and resistance, of being close to the soil and the sky, of plain speaking. Of The Journey. — Bonnie Greer

This will involve audacity, clarity and plain speaking; trying to straighten my accounts with the world. — Oliver Sacks

I have been speaking with Dyhern a great deal on the subject of dueling," Temeraire said, "and it seems plain to me that something must be done. You must give me your word, Laurence, that if anyone ever should insult you again, they must be told at once that I will insist on being your second myself. I am very much indebted to Mr. Hammond for having killed that wretched fellow, but in future, if anyone likes to prove they are not a coward by insulting you, they may fight me, and then they cannot complain of not having had satisfaction: I am sure everyone will agree they were brave, once they are dead. — Naomi Novik

I am so far from thinking the maxims of Confucius and Jesus Christ to differ, that I think the plain and simple maxims of the former, will help to illustrate the more obscure ones of the latter, accommodated to the then way of speaking. — Matthew Tindal

You asked him to go to bed with you?"
"I did, and you'd think I'd smashed him in the balls with my wrench. So that's the end of that."
Jude folded her hands, leaned forward. "I'm going to pry."
Brenna's lips twitched. "Oh, you haven't started that yet?"
"Not nearly. What exactly did you say to him?"
"I said, plain enough, that I thought we should have sex. And what's wrong with that?" she demanded, gesturing with her spoon. "You'd think a man would appreciate clear, honest speaking. — Nora Roberts

Being anti-rhetoric is, finally, just another rhetorical strategy. Rhetoric is what the other guy is doing - whereas you, you're just speaking the plain truth as you see it. — Sam Leith

Culture is a vulture but there's also vulture culture and cultured vultures and cultured yougurt (cherry, peach, pear, pineapple, grape, vanilla, plain, cherry vanilla, pineapple orage, cranberry, orange, mandarin orange, coffee, apricot, raspberry, blueberry, boysenberry, prune). And speaking of vulture culture there's counter-culture and under-the-counter culture, too. But whether you call it kulchur with a k and a ch and without the e it's still the same thing and you can't disguise it with pretty frills and a gallon of dog sweat. It still has two syllables and TWO-SYLLABLE WORDS SUCK so you can just forgetit, man. It's no fun at all and even fun wouldn't be fun if it was called funjure or funion or funching. But somehow fucking is still loads of fun even though there's that extra 3-letter cluster of vowels and consonants. Proof positive that there are exceptions everywhere you look. But don't look too hard, you might get eyestrain. — Richard Meltzer

Last days, last things, loom on: I write / to astonish myself. So much for all / plain speaking... — Geoffrey Hill

It turned out plant collecting was a solitary occupation. In the past Robert had enjoyed being alone, or so he thought. Actually he had rarely been alone for long: working in hotels, in stables, on ranches and farms, and as a miner, he had always been around others. Now, out in the woods or up in the hills or out on the flat central plain, he could go for days without speaking to anyone. His throat seemed to close up and he had to keep clearing it, singing songs aloud or reciting the Latin names of plants, just to check that he still had a voice. 'Araucaria imbricata. Sequoia sempervirens. Pinus lambertiana. Abies magnifica'. He was surprised at how much he missed people.. — Tracy Chevalier

Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life, without question the greatest commitment, came when finally I had the confidence in God that I would loan or yield my agency to him-without compulsion or pressure, without any duress, as a single individual alone, by myself, no counterfeiting, nothing expected other than the privilege. In a sense, speaking figuratively, to take one's agency, that precious gift which the scriptures make plain is essential to life itself, and say, "I will do as you direct," is afterward to learn that in so doing you possess it all the more. — Boyd K. Packer

The African specialist Nahid Toubia puts it plain [when speaking of female genital mutilation]: In a man it would range from amoutation of most of the penis, to removal of all the penis, its roots of soft tissue and part of the scrotal skin. — Eve Ensler

Flaubert teaches you to gave upon the truth and not blink from its consequences; he teaches you, with Montaigne, to sleep on the pillow of doubt; he teaches you to dissect out the constituent parts of reality, and to observe the Nature is always a mixture of genres; he teaches you the most exact use of language; he teaches you not to approach a book in search of moral or social pills
literature is not a pharmacopoeia; he teaches the pre-eminence of Truth, Beauty, Feeling and Style. And if you study his private life, he teaches courage, stoicism, friendship; the importance of intelligence, skepticism and wit; the folly of cheap patriotism; the virtue of being able to remain by yourself in your own room; the hatred of hypocrisy; distrust of the doctrinaire; the need for plain speaking. — Julian Barnes

I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you. — Maya Angelou

There is something about the pace and scale of British life - an appreciation of small pleasures, a kind of restraint with respect to greed, generally speaking - that makes life strangely agreeable. The British really are the only people in the world who become genuinely enlivened when presented with a hot beverage and a small plain biscuit. — Bill Bryson

This helps explain why for many women, speaking honestly in a professional environment carries an additional set of fears: Fear of not being considered a team player. Fear of seeming negative or nagging. Fear that constructive criticism will come across as just plain old criticism. Fear that by speaking up, we will call attention to ourselves, which might open us up to attack (a fear brought to us by that same voice in the back of our heads that urges us not to sit at the table). — Sheryl Sandberg

It was an interesting dilemma and pointed up a real point of difference between Nazism and Communism as forms of government: there was no room for the individual in Soviet Russia; conversely not everything was state-managed in Germany. The Nazis never shot anyone for being stupid, inefficient or just plain unlucky. Generally speaking the Nazis looked for a reason to shoot you, the commies were quite happy to shoot you without any reason at all - but when you're going to be shot, what's the difference? — Philip Kerr

Though I normally approve of plain speaking, as you know, I would suggest that as part of your good behavior, you refer to the king as 'his grace' or even simply 'the king' instead of 'that creature,' by the way. — Susan Higginbotham

This struck me as something of a double bind. Speak and your possession of an opinion was plain, clear to anyone. Refrain from speaking and still this was proof of an opinion. If Captain Rubran were to say, Truly, I have no opinion on the matter, would that merely be another proof she had one? — Ann Leckie

Years later, the plain-speaking Truman would explain: "I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president . . . . I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. — Douglas Brinkley

Plain speaking is necessary in any discussion of religion, for if the freethinker attacks the religious dogmas with hesitation, the orthodox believer assumes that it is with regret that the freethinker would remove the crutch that supports the orthodox. And all religious beliefs are 'crutches' hindering the free locomotive efforts of an advancing humanity. There are no problems related to human progress and happiness in this age which any theology can solve, and which the teachings of freethought cannot do better and without the aid of encumbrances. — David Marshall Brooks

I'm thinking of Anna, who kissed my bruises with a tenderness that made my heart flip over in my chest before she sucked my cock until I lost my mind. Anna who, with her plain speaking and fierce declarations, gave me back a piece of my pride. Anna, who still won't kiss me on the mouth or let me kiss hers — Kristen Callihan

I am plain-speaking out of both sides of my mouth. — Mason Cooley

We are not anti-American. we do not dislike Americans though we abhor American imperialism in all its manifestations. But then, so do many Americans. Many of them have said that even more forthrightly than we have, and many of them have suffered more than any of us for their plain speaking. — Tommy Douglas

Strictly speaking, there is but one real evil: I mean acute pain. All other complaints are so considerably diminished by time that it is plain the grief is owing to our passion, since the sensation of it vanishes when that is over. — Mary Wortley Montagu

Because of the oil-and-water relationship governments have cultivated between ethics and political economy, speaking in plain terms - spelling it out as it is - as become foreign to the public. So here goes: When government sports a surplus, this implies that the political pickpockets have stolen more funds than they can possibly dream of spending. The property is not theirs to keep! Conversely, when deficits are reported, this means that the kleptomaniacs have not been able to steal sufficient funds to cover their profligacy. — Ilana Mercer

But what she wanted to do was slip between cool sheets and fall asleep in a breeze from an open window. She wanted to sleep for days on end, and to wake up when the whole sorry business of the inquest and the missing boys had been resolved. She wanted sleep in order to put Mrs. Stone's testimony out of her head, and at the same time she wanted to bind all those words together into a club and hit every man in the room over the head with it. Because they hadn't really understood the story behind the story, and what Mrs. Stone was trying to tell them about Janine Campbell's life. Mrs. Stone had called herself plain-speaking and blunt, but she had wrapped every observation in the language of well-brought-up women, with the result that none of the men had any real sense of the anger and frustration that drove Janine Campbell. — Sara Donati

With the poetry of plain speaking, Shannon Hitchcock recreates the daily drama of a vanished world. — Richard Peck

I stand and listen to people speaking french in the stores and in the street. It's such a pert, crisp language, elegant as ruffling taffeta. — Belva Plain

Any sort of plain speaking is better than the nauseous sham good fellowship our democratic public men get up for shop use. — George Bernard Shaw

I am a Ford, not a Lincoln. My addresses will never be as eloquent as Mr. Lincoln's. But I will do my very best to equal his brevity and his plain speaking. — Gerald R. Ford

But in this case," he continues, tracing the line of the plasterwork with one finger, "I feel that there is one cliche that sums up my position so admirably that it would be pure egotism to attempt a more interesting periphrasis. Plain speaking, therefore, there is to be.
"There is undoubtedly a strong possibility, notwithstanding the vagaries of contingency and misfortune, that my son might
have fallen - or might, we could say, have voluntarily jumped, in accordance with the ethical codes with which he has been brought up - for a play you have made with some success, although, as I am persuaded you would concede, very little originality."
Plain speaking if you're Henry James, perhaps. — Deborah Meyler

Twenty-seven."
His brow puckered, and he blinked over at her. "Twenty-seven hundred years, right?"
If he were speaking to Taliyah, yes. "No. Just twenty-seven plain, ordinary years."
"You don't mean human years, do you?"
"No. I mean dog years," she said dryly, then pressed her lips together. Where was the filter that was usually poised over her mouth? Strider didn't seem to mind, though. Rather, he seemed stupefied. Would Sabin have had the same reaction were he awake? "What's so hard to believe about my age?" As the question echoed between them, a thought occurred to her and she blanched. "Do I look ancient?"
"No, no. Of course not. But you're immortal. Powerful. — Gena Showalter