“1092. Children and Fools tell Truth.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“1092. Children and Fools tell Truth.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
“Only children tell the whole truth, you know. That's what makes them children.”
Stephen King book Pet Sematary
Source: Pet Sematary
“Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by children.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841–1935) United States Supreme Court justice
A paraphrase of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., in "The Poet at the Breakfast-Table" in The Atlantic Monthly Vol. 29 (1872), p. 231: "I like children, — he said to me one day at table. — I like 'em, and I respect 'em. Pretty much all the honest truth-telling there is in the world is done by them".
Misattributed
“They say the only people who tell the truth are drunkards and children. Guess which one I am.”
Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor
Sita Ram Goel book The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India
The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India (1994)
“What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?”
Quamquam ridentem dicere verum quid vetat? ut pueris olim dant crustula blandi doctores, elementa velint ut discere prima.
Book I, satire i, line 24
Satires (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”
Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
1129: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (1960)
Variant: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
Context: p>Tell all the Truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —</p
Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale
Source: The Thirteenth Tale
June Jordan (1936–2002) Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist
"Life After Lebanon" (1984), later published in On Call : Political Essays (1985), and Some of Us Did Not Die : New and Selected Essays of June Jordan (2002)