Quotes about tell
page 2

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Source: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire (2005), p. 86
Source: War Talk

Art, Music, Literature, Joy

“I don't like to discuss my marriage, but I will tell you something which may sound corny but which happens to be true. I have steak at home. Why should I go out for hamburger?”

Paul Newman (1925–2008) American actor and film director

Quoted in Paul and Joanne: A Biography of Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward by Joe Morella and Edward Z. Epstein (1988), p. 157

Marriage, Home

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variant: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1

Life

“I guess I'm pretty much of a lone wolf. I don't say I don't like people at all but, to tell you the truth I only like it then if I have a chance to look deep into their hearts and their minds.”

Béla Lugosi (1882–1956) Hungarian actor

People, Truth, Wolf, Chance

“Look, when you realize how fake it all is; the football, the basketball, the Lady Gaga, the Justin Bieber—you know, who gives you these carbon tax messages. They tell your kids they gotta love Justin Biebler [sic], and then Biebler [sic] says "hand in your guns", "pass the Cyber Security Act", and "the police state is good", and then your children are turned into a mindless vassals—who now, they look up to some twit, instead of looking up to Thomas Jefferson, or looking up to Nikola Tesla, or looking up to Magellan; I mean, kids, Magellan is a lot cooler than Justin Bieber! He circumnavigated with one ship the entire planet! He was killed by wild natives before they got back to Portugal! And when they got back there was only like eleven people alive of the two hundred and something crew and the entire ship was rotting down to the waterline! That's destiny! That's will! That's striving! That's being a trailblazer and explore! Going into space! Mathematics! Quantum mechanics! The secrets of the universe! It's all there! Life is fiery with its beauty! Its incredible detail! Tuning into it! They wanna shutter your mind, talking about Justin Bieber! It's pure evil! They're taking your intellect, your soul, and giving you Michael Jordan and Bieber. Unlock your human potential! Defeat the globalists who wanna shutter your mind!—Your doorways to perception!—I wanna see you truly live! I wanna see you truly be who you are!”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

Alex Jones: The "Justin Biebler" Rant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDMB0KyhPN8, 21 February 2011. 2011

Love, Life, Children, People

“I am here by the will of the Great Spirit, and by his will I am chief.… I want to tell you that if the Great Spirit has chosen anyone to be the chief of this country, it is myself.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Testimony to the Dawes Commission (22 August 1883)

Country

“What scientific truth tells you is: what things are. Genuine religious truth tells you: how you should act. These are not the same.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Concepts

Truth

“If your head tells you one thing and your heart tells you another, before you do anything, you should first decide whether you have a better head or a better heart.”

Marilyn vos Savant (1946) US American magazine columnist, author and lecturer

As quoted in Loose Cannons: Devastating Dish from the World's Wildest Women (1998) by Autumn Stephens, p. 270

Heart

“Tell us you lost 6 million. Historians, scholars, scientists, they went to some of the death camps. It wasn't 6 million, it wasn't 5 million, it wasn't 4 million, it wasn't even 3 million. Some of them say we'd be hard-pressed to get 1 1/2 million. Reports on the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis were bloated, exaggerated, probably fabricated.”

Khalid Abdul Muhammad (1948–2001) American activist

Speech in Brooklyn, New York (29 March 1994) quoted in Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present (2002) by Marvin Perry and Frederick Schweitzer

Death

“Don't let it end like this tell them i said something”

Pancho Villa (1878–1923) Mexican revolutionary

“People who should be shot: Fascist thugs, religious fundamentalists, people who write lists telling you who should be shot.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Wall and Piece (2005)

People

“Tell my friends to get me out of here.”

Augusto Pinochet (1915–2006) Former dictator of the republic of Chile

October 27, 1998, nine days after being arrested in London, quoted in Heraldo Muñoz (2008) The Dictator's Shadow
1990s

“To tell the truth, to arrive together at the truth, is a communist and revolutionary act.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Letter from Prison (21 June 1919), translated by Hamish Henderson, Edinburgh University Student Publications.

Truth

“In a culture, you can choose fear or love. It’s been my experience and my observation that humans on this planet feel more comfortable with fear rather than love and openness… I do know what history tells us about humans. And humans, they actually don’t feel very comfortable with openness and freedom.”

RuPaul (1960) Actriz de Televisa, dueña y señora de los ejidos cacaoahuateros

Quoted by Doug Rule in RuPaul: Ultimate Queen http://www.metroweekly.com/2016/04/ultimate-queen-rupaul/ (2016)

Love, Fear, Feeling, History

“What men and women need is encouragement. Their natural resisting powers should be strengthened, not weakened…. Instead of always harping on a man's faults, tell him of his virtues. Try to pull him out of his rut of bad habits. Hold up to him his better self, his REAL self that can dare and do and win out!… The influence of a beautiful, helpful, hopeful character is contagious, and may revolutionize a whole town…. People radiate what is in their minds and in their hearts. If a man feels kindly and obliging, his neighbors will feel that way, too, before long. But if he scolds and scowls and criticizes — his neighbors will return scowl for scowl, and add interest!… When you look for the bad, expecting it, you will get it. When you know you will find the good — you will get that…. Tell your son Tom you KNOW he'll be glad to fill that woodbox — then watch him start, alert and interested!”

Eleanor H. Porter (1868–1920) American novelist

Works, Pollyanna (1913)

Women, Men, People, Beauty

“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? … By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion. Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”

Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin

National Prayer Breakfast speech, Washington, D.C. (3 February 1994) http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/abortion/ab0039.html. 1990s

Love, Women, War, People

“You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Posthumous attributions, Tupac: Resurrection (2003)

Food

“There are many things that I want to tell you -- well, really, only one -- but that one is as large as the ocean -- as the ocean is deep and infinite, so is my love for you and it will be for all my life!”

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) Italian composer

Ho tante cose che ti voglio dire, o una sola, ma grande come il mare, come il mare profonda ed infinita...Sei il mio amore e tutta la mia vita!
Mimi
Act IV Sono andante?
La bohème (1896)

Love, Life

“Let me tell you one thing. There is great complexity in this creation. The Master does one thing through one man and another thing through another person. Oh, it is so inscrutable!”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[Swami Tapasyananda, Swami Nikhilananda, Sri Sarada Devi, the Holy Mother; Life and Conversations, 312]

Personality

“That deep torture may be called a hell,
When more is felt than one hath power to tell.”

William Shakespeare book The Rape of Lucrece

The Rape of Lucrece.

Hell

“I can better understand the inert blindness & defiant ignorance of the reactionaries from having been one of them. I know how smugly ignorant I was—wrapped up in the arts, the natural (not social) sciences, the externals of history & antiquarianism, the abstract academic phases of philosophy, & so on—all the one-sided standard lore to which, according to the traditions of the dying order, a liberal education was limited. God! the things that were left out—the inside facts of history, the rational interpretation of periodic social crises, the foundations of economics & sociology, the actual state of the world today … & above all, the habit of applying disinterested reason to problems hitherto approached only with traditional genuflections, flag-waving, & callous shoulder-shrugs! All this comes up with humiliating force through an incident of a few days ago—when young Conover, having established contact with Henneberger, the ex-owner of WT, obtained from the latter a long epistle which I wrote Edwin Baird on Feby. 3, 1924, in response to a request for biographical & personal data. Little Willis asked permission to publish the text in his combined SFC-Fantasy, & I began looking the thing over to see what it was like—for I had not the least recollection of ever having penned it. Well …. I managed to get through, after about 10 closely typed pages of egotistical reminiscences & showing-off & expressions of opinion about mankind & the universe. I did not faint—but I looked around for a 1924 photograph of myself to burn, spit on, or stick pins in! Holy Hades—was I that much of a dub at 33 … only 13 years ago? There was no getting out of it—I really had thrown all that haughty, complacent, snobbish, self-centred, intolerant bull, & at a mature age when anybody but a perfect damned fool would have known better! That earlier illness had kept me in seclusion, limited my knowledge of the world, & given me something of the fatuous effusiveness of a belated adolescent when I finally was able to get around more in 1920, is hardly much of an excuse. Well—there was nothing to be done … except to rush a note back to Conover & tell him I'd dismember him & run the fragments through a sausage-grinder if he ever thought of printing such a thing! The only consolation lay in the reflection that I had matured a bit since '24. It's hard to have done all one's growing up since 33—but that's a damn sight better than not growing up at all.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Catherine L. Moore (7 February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 407-408
Non-Fiction, Letters

God, Age, World, Education

“Here's how you can tell someone is your friend: A) You can tell them bad news, and they'll listen. B) You can tell them good news, and they'll help you celebrate.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Excerpt from 2017 Personality Lecture 21. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9U5IHQWSZc Personality Lectures

Help

“And fate? No one alive has ever escaped it,
neither brave man nor coward, I tell you—
it's born with us the day that we are born.”

Homér Iliad

VI. 488–489 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Fate

“As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together…. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Spirit. This Spirit is the matrix of all matter.”

Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist

Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max&#8209; Planck&#8209; Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in The Spontaneous Healing of Belief https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1 (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212; Braden mistranslates intelligenten Geist as "intelligent Mind", which is an obvious tautology.

Life, Intelligence, Study, Science

“You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

As recorded by reporters covering a speech made by Sitting Bull to U.S. military officers at a conference between the military and the Sioux who had retreated to Canada. Published in Utley, Robert M. The Lance and the Shield. New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1993. p. 196.
Context: You come here to tell us lies, but we don't want to hear them. If we told you more, you would have paid no attention. That is all I have to say.

“The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.”

Joanne K. Rowling (1965) British novelist, author of the Harry Potter series

J. K. Rowling, as quoted in ‪Harry Potter's Bookshelf : The Great Books Behind the Hogwarts Adventures‬ (2009) by John Granger 
2000s
Context: I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime would think of Nazi Germany. … I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the Wizarding world. So you have to the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is a great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves on nothing else, they can pride themselves on perceived purity. … The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think it's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.

People, Truth, Books, Question

“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming (2013)
Context: We writers – and especially writers for children, but all writers – have an obligation to our readers: it's the obligation to write true things, especially important when we are creating tales of people who do not exist in places that never were – to understand that truth is not in what happens but what it tells us about who we are. Fiction is the lie that tells the truth, after all.

Truth, Lie

“Here profits not
To tell the whole truth with clear face unveiled.
Often is man's best wisdom to be silent.”

Pindar (-517–-437 BC) Ancient Greek poet

οὔ τοι ἅπασα κερδίων
φαίνοισα πρόσωπον ἀλάθει᾽ ἀτρεκής·
καὶ τὸ σιγᾶν πολλάκις ἐστὶ σοφώτατον ἀνθρώπῳ νοῆσαι.
Nemean 5, line 16-8; page 222. (483 BC?)

Wisdom, Truth

“Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)
Context: Now listen to this...
Ill tell you about texas radio and the big beat
Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language
Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger
Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god
Wandering, wandering in hopeless night
Out here in the perimeter there are no stars...
Out here we is stoned...
Immaculate.

God, Loss

“It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do; we hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

People, Making love, Sense

“Indeed, when a ruler once becomes unpopular, all his acts, be they good or bad, tell against him.”

Tacitus book Histories

Book I, 7
Histories (100-110)

Bad luck

“I call myself an extremist - extremely kind, extremely just, extremely merciful, extremely honest. What's wrong? The Qur'an tells me to be extremely honest. Now I cannot be partly honest!”

Zakir Naik (1965) Islamic televangelist

In SEEKING KNOWLEDGE IN THE LIGHT OF ISLAM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOC6iZNwvqc

“Spiritual awakening is not a special feeling, state, or experience. It is not a goal or destination, somewhere to reach in the future. As the Buddha was trying to tell us (though few actually listened), it is not a superhuman achievement or attainment. You don’t have to travel to India to find it. It is not a special state of perfection reserved for the lucky or the privileged few. It is not an exclusive club. It is not an out-of-body experience, and it does not involve living in a cave, shutting off all your beautiful senses, detaching yourself from the realities of this modern world. It cannot be transmitted to you by a fancy bearded (or non-bearded) guru, nor can it be taken away or lost. You do not have to become anyone’s disciple or follower, or give away all your possessions. You do not have to join a cult. You do not have to follow anyone.

Rather, is a constant and ancient invitation – throughout every moment of your life – to trust and embrace yourself exactly as you are, in all your glorious imperfection. It is about being fully present and awake to each precious moment, coming out of the epic movie of past and future (“The Story of Me”) and showing up for life, knowing that even your feelings of non-acceptance are accepted here. It is about radically opening up to this extraordinary gift of existence, embracing both the pain and the joy of it, the bliss and the sorrow, the ecstasy and the overwhelm, the certainty and the doubt. Knowing that you are never separate from the Whole, never broken, never truly lost.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“People often ask me when am I gonna slow down. You know what I tell 'em? I'm just gettin' started.”

Tina Turner (1939) singer, dancer, actress, and author

Spoken interlude during "Proud Mary", live at The Apollo, Manchester, 14 March 1979 ("On the Road", VHS)
Lyrics

People

“No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Wisdom, Democracy

“I was just telling myself to do nothing more and nothing less, and just telling myself to breathe because in that moment I literally felt like I was going to puke, I was so nervous. My normal is good enough, so I don't do anything more or anything less, I just have to do what I normally do.”

Sunisa Lee (2003) American artistic gymnast; first Hmong American Olympic gold medalist

"Suni Lee talks gold medal win, 'cherished' backyard balance beam she trained on as a kid" in Today (30 July 2021) https://www.today.com/news/suni-lee-talks-gold-medal-win-i-still-can-t-t226952

“We cannot tell, at first sight, who is correct or wrong, because we are all caught up in a different perceptive, views and opinions.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Remember, when we jeer at the Devil and tell ourselves that he does not exist, that is when he is happiest.”

Gabriele Amorth (1925–2016) Italian Roman Catholic priest and exorcist

Source: "An Interview With Fr Gabriele Amorth - The Church's Leading Exorcist" (2001)

“I walked through the Fire…and lived to tell about it…”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

“If I tell you I'm better than you, say no”

Josephs Quartzy (1999) Tanzanian actor

Source: Sweetest song I know

“You can´t just tell people what to do and then expect them to perform well.”

Mike Krzyzewski (1947) American basketball player and coach

People

“Lies don't fix things. They don't even make things easier, at least not in the long run. Best to tell the truth then clean up an honest mess" P. C. Cast ( Grandma Redbird)… So wish People would understand this!!”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

People, Truth, Understanding, Grandma

“The west need someone to tell the man who walks around with the biggest stick in the world, that that stick can`t bring down God`s house.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

God, World, Housing

“Don't mind anything anyone tells you about anyone else. Judge everyone and everything for yourself.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady (1881), Ch. XXIII.

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) American photojournalist

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me "I love you."”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

The Distinguished Annie Clark Tanner Lecture, 16th-annual Families Alive Conference, Weber State University, May 8, 1997 - Full text online at weber.edu http://departments.weber.edu/chfam/familiesalive/angelouspeech.html3 Context: I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me "I love you." … There is an African saying which is: "Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt."

Love, People, Wise

“Tell the children the truth.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Children, Truth

“Tell me then, does love make one a fool or do only fools fall in love?”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

Love, Fools

“my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: "Henry, smile!
why don't you ever smile?"

and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Happiness, Smile, Fish, Time

“They say that nobody is perfect. Then they tell you practice makes perfect. I wish they'd make up their minds.”

Wilt Chamberlain (1936–1999) basketball player

Perfection

“Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel…the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Women, World, Feeling, Thinking

“The day of resurrection is determined in this manner. The first Sunday after the full moon in Aries is celebrated as Easter. Aries begins on the 21st day of March and ends approximately on the 19th day of April. The sun’s entry into Aries marks the beginning of Spring The moon in its monthly transit around the earth will form sometime between March 21st and April 25th an opposition to the sun, which opposition is called a full moon, The first Sunday after this phenomenon of the heavens occurs Is celebrated as Easter; the Friday preceding this day is observed as Good Friday. This movable date should tell the observant one to look for some interpretation other than the one commonly accepted. These days do not mark the anniversaries of the death and resurrection of an individual who lived on earth.”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: Your Faith is Your Fortune

Death, Spring, Sun

“The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

People, Truth, Beauty, Feeling

“Too often the people complain that they have done nothing with their
lives and then they wait for somebody to tell them that this isn't so.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

People, Waiting

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Collected Poems

“Lies don't fix things. They don't even make things easier, at least not in the long run. Best to tell the truth and then clean up an honest mess.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Truth

“One of the hardest things for boys to learn is that a teacher is human. One of the hardest things for a teacher to learn is not to try and tell them.”

Alan Bennett The History Boys

Source: The History Boys

Boy, Learning, Teachers

“Folks, I'm telling you,
birthing is hard
and dying is mean-
so get yourself
a little loving
in between.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Love, Birth

“Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: Война и мир

Stupidity, Confidence, Self-confidence

“We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

St. 18
To a Skylark (1821)
Source: The Complete Poems

Pain, Laughter, Sad

“Who is it that can tell me who I am?”

William Shakespeare King Lear

Source: King Lear

“… I will exile my thoughts if they think of you again, and I will rip my lips out if they say your name once more. Now if you do exist, I will tell you my final word in life or in death, I tell you goodbye.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Life, Death, Thinking

“She was dull, unattractive, couldn't tell the time, count money or tie her own shoe laces… But I loved her”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Love, Money, Shoe, Time

“The most interesting information come from children, for they tell all they know and then stop.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Children

“You can’t really change the heart without telling a story.”

Martha C. Nussbaum (1947) American philosopher

Change, Heart

“Tell me anyway--Maybe I can find the truth by comparing the lies.”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

Truth

“Well, I'd love to wear a rainbow everyday and tell the world that everything's okay / But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back / 'Til things are brighter, I'm the man in black.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

Source: Man in Black

Love, World

“Only time(whatever that may be) will tell.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time

Time

“You don't need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“Life is pain… anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Life, Pain

“Do not be concerned with the faults of other persons. Do not see others' faults with a hateful mind. There is an old saying that if you stop seeing others' faults, then naturally seniors and venerated and juniors are revered. Do not imitate others' faults; just cultivate virtue. Buddha prohibited unwholesome actions, but did not tell us to hate those who practice unwholesome actions.”

Dogen (1200–1253) Japanese Zen buddhist teacher

Hate, Nature, Personality

“Love is not a habit, a commitment, or a debt. It isn't what romantic songs tell us it is - love simply is.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Love

“everyone tells you what's good for you. they don't want you to find your own answers. they want you to believe theirs.”

Dan Millman (1946) American self help writer

Source: Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives

“I tell you loneliness is the thing to master. Courage and fear, love, death are only parts of it and can easily be ruled afterwards. If I make myself master my own loneliness there will be peace or safety: and perhaps these are the same.”

Martha Gellhorn (1908–1998) journalist from the United States

Notebook entry, quoted in "Gellhorn : A Twentieth Century Life" (2003) by Caroline Moorehead, p. 88.

Loneliness

“Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.”

Mark Nepo (1951) American writer

Source: The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Truth, Way, Feeling, Imagination

“People can tell you to keep your mouth shut, but it doesn't stop you having your own opinions. Even if people are still very young, they shouldn't be prevented from saying what they think.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

2 March 1944
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

People, Thinking

“Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit!”

Bill Maher (1956) American stand-up comedian

God, Way, Suicide

“Flattery is telling the other person precisely what he thinks about himself.”

Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer

Thinking, Personality

“It takes two people to make a lie work: the person who tells it, and the one who believes it.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

People, Lie, Personality

“Dreams like a podcast,
Downloading truth in my ears.
They tell me cool stuff."
"Apollo?" I guess, because I figured nobody else could make a haiku that bad.
He put his finger to his lips. "I'm incognito. Call me Fred."
"A god named Fred?”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

God, Truth, Dreams

“They are fools who kiss and tell'--
Wisely has the poet sung.
Man may hold all sorts of posts
If he'll only hold his tongue.”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Fools, Kiss

“God doesn’t tell you to do hard things so He can stand back and laugh and watch you struggle. He tells you to do things the things that He knows are gonna work out to your good in the end.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

No source for this quote among Orwell's writings has yet been located, and the earliest published source of this phrase found on Google Books is this snippet https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=kWD0AAAAMAAJ&q=%22truth+is+a+revolutionary+act%22&dq=%22truth+is+a+revolutionary+act%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs0MKSqpbKAhWH0iYKHXj6ABUQ6AEIJjAD from p. 5 of Science Dimension, Volumes 14–18 (1982) published by the National Research Council Canada. Quote Investigator has an article "In a Time of Universal Deceit – Telling the Truth Is a Revolutionary Act" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/02/24/truth-revolutionary/ indicating their attempts to trace the quote. The earliest similar remarks they had found were in a 1982 book titled “Partners in Ecocide: Australia’s Complicity in the Uranium Cartel” by Venturino Giorgio Venturini, where the word “universal” was omitted, and a specific originating text was not identified: "In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." Variants: During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. In an age of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act. Truth is treason in an empire of lies. (Often attributed by Ron Paul to Orwell but never sourced.) In the mid-19th century Karl Georg von Raumer made a remark, which has a similar meaning. In Geschichte der Pedagogic (1855), he states: 'Jede keimende Wahrheit ist revolutionär gegen den entgegenstehenden herrschenden Irrthum, jede keimende Tugend revolutionär gegen das im Schwange gehende, ihr widersprechende Laster' which translates as: "Every germinating truth is revolutionary against the opposing ruling error, every germinating virtue is revolutionary against popular contradictory lies." In 1898 French socialist Jean Jaurès said, "When a society, when an institution, lives only by lies, truth is revolutionary." He was speaking with reference to the ongoing Dreyfus Affair. The statement is quoted in Ruth Harris, The Man on Devil's Island: Alfred Dreyfus and the Affair that Divided France (2010), p. 262. (She cites Le petit Meridional, 3 July 1898, as the original source.) This seems very close in spirit and in phrasing to the pseudo-Orwell quotation. (The cumulative index to the many volumes of Orwell's writing compiled and edited by Peter Davison does not reveal any direct references to Jaurès or the Dreyfus Affair.) Disputed Variant: In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

Truth, Universe, Time

“I'll do it because I want to but not because you tell me to!”

Betty MacDonald (1908–1958) writer