“When in doubt tell the truth. It will confound your enemies and astound your friends.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“In a climate of confusion, one of the surest ways of confounding the enemy is to tell him the plain truth.”
— Gordon R. Dickson, book Necromancer
Source: Necromancer (1962), Chapter 5 (p. 36)
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Gordon R. Dickson19
Canadian-American science fiction writer 1923–2001Related quotes
“Advised a young diplomat "to tell the truth, and so puzzle and confound his enemies."”
Henry Wotton (1568–1639) English ambassador
Attributed. E.g., Vol 24, Encyclopedia Britannica of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, page 721 https://books.google.com/books?id=_GlJAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA721&lpg=PA721&dq=truth+wotton+confound+advice&source=bl&ots=-cGk3UDLLj&sig=ltOR1xtI9WFic1JWKiFmIZ8Yce0&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjVkZCsj-jRAhXCyFQKHTmsCkAQ6AEIODAG#v=onepage&q=truth%20wotton%20confound%20advice&f=false (9th Ed. 1894). <br class="br">Compare Mark Twain who, in Following the Equator, said "When in doubt, tell the truth" (which is often mis-quoted as containing an additional clause providing "it will confound your enemies and astound your friends").
“Often, the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.”
Mark Twain book Following the Equator
Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. LIX
Following the Equator (1897)
“One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.”
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman
15 February 1788
On the Impeachment of Warren Hastings (1788-1794)
“The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.”
Robert Benchley (1889–1945) American comedian
Source: "Quick Quotations" in My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)
Context: The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn’t make any sense if quoted as it stands.
Henry L. Stimson (1867–1950) United States Secretary of War
The Bomb and the Opportunity (March 1946)
“Live, and so confound our enemies.”
Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga
Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)
“In a myriad of ways you tell one truth.”
Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman
"The Bell of the Shape," p. 35
The Shape (2000), Sequence: “Bells”