Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God
“If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
“If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.”
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
Variants:
If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
Disputed
“They say that death kills you, But death doesn't kill you. Boredom and indifference kill you.”
Sergeant Patrick Harper and Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 29
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Havoc (2003)
Bakit ikaw ba pupunta ng Mexico ngayon?
Duterte's 'oops' moment with the Mexican ambassador https://www.rappler.com/nation/politics/elections/2016/128758-duterte-crime-mexican-ambassador(April 8, 2016)
