Quotes & Sayings About Telling The Truth Is Best

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

Livingston: Some aspects of business turned out to be less of a mystery than you had thought. What did you find you were better at than you thought? Graham: I found I could actually sell moderately well. I could convince people of stuff. I learned a trick for doing this: to tell the truth. A lot of people think that the way to convince people of things is to be eloquent - to have some bag of tricks for sliding conclusions into their brains. But there's also a sort of hack that you can use if you are not a very good salesman, which is simply tell people the truth. Our strategy for selling our software to people was: make the best software and then tell them, truthfully, "this is the best software." And they could tell we were telling the truth. Another advantage of telling the truth is that you don't have to remember what you've said. You don't have to keep any state in your head. It's a purely functional business strategy. (Hackers will get what I mean.) — Jessica Livingston

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

[Literature is] the best way of telling the truth; it's a process of producing grand, beautiful, well-ordered lies that tell more truth than any assemblage of facts. — Julian Barnes

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

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

The song was the late Ishihara Yujiro's "Rusty Knife," and Sakaguchi's singing was so bad that it
gave the lyric a strange new pathos and poignancy. Listening to his version, Suzuki Midori was
reminded that no one ever said it would be easy to go on living in this world; Takeuchi Midori
pondered the noble truth that nobody's life consists exclusively of happy times; Henmi Midori
vowed to remember that it's best to keep an open heart and forgive even those who've
trespassed against us; and Tomiyama Midori had to keep telling herself that hitting rock bottom
is in fact the first step to a hopeful new future. — Ryu Murakami

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

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

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up. — Nicholson Baker

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

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

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

The best that can happen to a girl, Claire, is to be a bit plain, like you. You think I'm being unkind, but I am telling you a truth. A plain girl has a longer time to herself, and when a man falls in love with her, he loves her for herself, for who she is. — Jane Smiley

Harris: Yes. In fact, self-deception might have paid evolutionary dividends in other ways. Robert Trivers argues, for instance, that people who can believe their own lies turn out to be the best liars of all - and an ability to deceive rivals has obvious advantages in the state of nature. Now, clearly many things may have been adaptive for our ancestors - such as tribal warfare, rape, xenophobia - that we now deem unethical and would never want to defend. But I'm wondering if you see any possibility that a social system that maximizes truth-telling could be one that fails to maximize the well-being of all participants. Is it possible that some measure of deception is good for us? — Sam Harris

Who makes things up? Who tells the real story? We all turn our lives into stories. It is a defining characteristic of our species. We retell our experiences. We quickly learn what parts are interesting to our listeners and what parts lag, and we shape our narratives accordingly. It doesn't mean we aren't telling the truth; we've simply learned which parts to leave out. Every time we tell the story again, we don't go back to the original event and start from scratch, we go back to the last time we told the story. It's the story we shape and improve on, we don't change what happened. This is also a way we have of protecting ourselves. It would be too painful to relive a childhood illness or the death of your best friend every time you had to speak of it. By telling the story from the story, instead of from the actual events, we are able to distance ourselves from our suffering. It also gives us the chance to make the story something people can hear. — Ann Patchett

What is whiter than snow?' he said. 'The truth,' said Grania.
'What is the best colour?' said Finn. 'The colour of childhood,' said she.
'What is hotter than fire?' 'The face of a hospitable man when he sees a stranger coming in, and the house empty.'
'What has a taste more bitter than poison?' 'The reproach of an enemy.'
'What is best for a champion?' 'His doings to be high, and his pride to be low.'
'What is the best of jewels?' 'A knife.'
'What is sharper than a sword?' 'The wit of a woman between two men.'
'What is quicker than the wind?' said Finn then. 'A woman's mind,' said Grania. And indeed she was telling no lie when she said that. — Lady Augusta Gregory

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

We want a sense that an important character, like a narrator, is reliable. We want to believe that a character is not playing ages or being coy or being manipulative, but is telling the truth to the best of his or her ability ... We do not wish to be crudely manipulated ... We want to be massaged by a masseur, not whapped by a carpet beater. — Anne Lamott

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

When you are scanning for lies and you can't decide if a person is telling the truth or lying, it's in your best interests to always go with your gut feeling. — Brian Night

Isn't there a flaw in the logic of that phrase - speak truth to power? It assumes that power doesn't know the truth. But power knows the truth just as well, if not better, than the powerless know the truth. Enron knows what it's doing. We don't have to tell it what it's doing. We have to tell other people what Enron is doing. Similarly, the people who are building the dams know what they're doing. The contractors know how much they're stealing. The bureaucrats know how much they're getting in bribes.
Power knows the truth. There isn't any doubt about that. It is really about telling the story. Good fiction is the truest thing that ever there was. Facts are not necessarily the only truths. Facts can be fiddled with by economists and bankers. There are other kinds of truth. It's about telling the story. As a writer, that's the best thing I can do. It's not just about digging up facts. — Arundhati Roy

The single best thing about coming out of the closet is that nobody can insult you by telling you what you've just told them. — Rachel Maddow

WARNING:
The following is a transcript of a digital recording. In certain places, the audio quality was poor, so some words and phrases represent the author's best guesses. Where possible, illustrations of important symbols mentioned in the recording have been added. Background noises such as scuffling, hitting, and cursing by the two speakers have not been transcribed The author makes no claims for the authenticity of the recording. It seems impossible that the two young narrators are telling the truth, but you, the reader, must decide for yourself. — Rick Riordan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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