Quotes about tell
page 57

Kelly Osbourne photo

“Mom, I have something to tell you. My thong, is so far up my crack right now.”

Kelly Osbourne (1984) English singer-songwriter, actress, television presenter and fashion designer

The Osbournes

John Selden photo

“Ignorance of the law excuses no man; not that all men know the law, but because 'tis an excuse every man will plead, and no man can tell how to refute him.”

John Selden (1584–1654) English jurist and scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution, and of Jewish law

Law.
Table Talk (1689)

Wendell Berry photo

“In the effort to tell a whole story, to see it whole and clear, I have had to imagine more than I have known.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"Imagination in Place".
The Way of Ignorance (2005)

James Clerk Maxwell photo
Aristides de Sousa Mendes photo

“Even if I am dismissed, I can only act as a Christian, as my conscience tells me.”

Aristides de Sousa Mendes (1885–1954) Portuguese diplomat

Quoted in The Independent, Sunday 17 October 2010

Gloria Estefan photo
Alan Guth photo

“Usually they finish by whining «but I WANT it!!! and so, I tell them: «So what? Everybody wants something. I want a pony. Get over it.”

Paul Vixie (1963) American internet pioneer

CircleID article http://www.circleid.com/posts/putting_multiple_root_nameserver_issue_to_rest/
Notes: referring to proponents of multiple DNS roots.

Tucker Carlson photo

“Don't take a leak on my shoes and tell me it's raining.”

Tucker Carlson (1969) American political commentator

source needed
Date unidentified

Lin Yu-fang photo

“(Mainland) China is telling you (Taiwan) that that there is no safe place.”

Lin Yu-fang (1951) Taiwanese politician

Lin Yu-fang (2016) cited in " China military flights 'a warning,' say lawmakers http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/china-taiwan-relations/2016/12/12/486486/China-military.htm" on The China Post, 12 December 2016.

Abbas Kiarostami photo

“From my very first movie, what was my concentration, my inspiration, was I didn't want to narrate something, I didn't want to tell a story. I wanted to show something, I wanted for them to make their own story from what they were seeing.”

Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) Iranian film director, screenwriter, photographer and film producer

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2009/01/a-conversation-with-kiarostami.html

“Gurdjieff said, “Change depends on you, and it will not come about through study. You can know everything and yet remain where you are. It is like a man who knows all about money and the laws of banking, but has no money of his own in the bank. What does all his knowledge do for him?”

Here Gurdjieff suddenly changed his manner of speaking, and looking at me very directly he said: “You have the possibility of changing, but I must warn you that it will not be easy. You are still full of the idea that you can do what you like. In spite of all your study of free will and determinism, you have not yet understood that so long as you remain in this place, you can do nothing at all. Within this sphere there is no freedom. Neither your knowledge nor all your activity will give you freedom. This is because you have no …” Gurdjieff found it difficult to express what he wanted in Turkish. He used the word varlik, which means roughly the quality of being present. I thought he was referring to the experience of being separated from one’s body.

Neither I nor the Prince [Sabaheddin] could understand what Gurdjieff wished to convey. I felt sad, because his manner of speaking left me in no doubt that he was telling me something of great importance. I answered, rather lamely, that I knew that knowledge was not enough, but what else was there to do but study?…”

John G. Bennett (1897–1974) British mathematician and author

Source: Witness: the Story of a Search (1962), p. 46–48 cited in: "Gurdjieff’s Temple Dances by John G. Bennett", Gurdjieff International Review, on gurdjieff.org; About Constantinople 1920

Heidi Klum photo

“We went somewhere very nice for dinner — it was very good but I can't tell you exactly what we did. It would be too naughty and you can’t run it anyway. It would just be bloop bleep bloop bloop bleep. But it was a very good first date.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

On her first date with Seal, quoted by Hollie McKay in "Heidi Klum's 'Naughty' First Date With Seal" http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,352078,00.html

Victor Villaseñor photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Miguel de Unamuno photo
Holly Knight photo
Julian of Norwich photo
Fran Lebowitz photo
Stewart Brand photo
Ron Paul photo
Otto Neurath photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Stephen Colbert photo
Brian K. Vaughan photo

“If a good editor will let me tell my story with the right artist, I'm happy.”

Brian K. Vaughan (1976) American screenwriter, comic book creator

Ain't It Cool News interview

Stephen King photo
Derren Brown photo
George William Curtis photo
Robert J. Sawyer photo
Chris Cornell photo
Peter Cook photo

“Tell God not to go away. I'll be back in a minute.”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

Bedazzled (1967)

Marsilio Ficino photo
Joe Buck photo

“The Boston Red Sox, and the fans through New England, will tell you they were 5 outs away, in the 8th inning, leading by 3 as Boone hits it to deep left! That might send the Yankees to the World Series! Boone, a hero in game 7!”

Joe Buck (1969) American sportscaster

Calling Aaron Boone's dramatic walk-off, series clinching home run in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, one of the most iconic moments in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry.
2000s

John Updike photo
Jay-Z photo

“A wise man told me don't argue with fools
Cause people from a distance can't tell who is who”

Jay-Z (1969) American rapper, businessman, entrepreneur, record executive, songwriter, record producer and investor

Takeover
The Blueprint 2: The Gift & The Curse (2002)

Ron Paul photo
Chris Cornell photo
Bill Engvall photo

“Most work for their belly, for cloth of cubit dimension
Some worship Lakshmi’s spouse for salvation
Lifting palanquins Is for their belly
Fighting powerful wrestlers is for the belly
Telling lies is for the belly
Thinking of Lord is for salvation
Concocting politics is for the belly
Riding elephant or horse is for the belly
Hurting other people is for belly
To pray Lord is for emancipation
Lifting heavy rocks is for the belly
Yelling loud is for the belly
Pray Purandara Vittala is for salvation
With pre-planned contemplation.”

Purandara Dasa (1484–1564) Music composer

In this composition Dasa describes the plight of the working class to work for their survival as the rich exploit them, as quoted here[Narayan, M.K.V., Lyrical Musings on Indic Culture: A Sociology Study of Songs of Sant Purandara Dasa, http://books.google.com/books?id=-r7AxJp6NOYC&pg=PA79, 1 January 2010, Readworthy, 978-93-80009-31-5, 85]

“Our society, it turns out, can use modern art. A restaurant, today, will order a mural by Míro in as easy and matter-of-fact a spirit as, twenty-five years ago, it would have ordered one by Maxfield Parrish. The president of a paint factory goes home, sits down by his fireplace—it looks like a chromium aquarium set into the wall by a wall-safe company that has branched out into interior decorating, but there is a log burning in it, he calls it a firelace, let’s call it a fireplace too—the president sits down, folds his hands on his stomach, and stares at two paintings by Jackson Pollock that he has hung on the wall opposite him. He feels at home with them; in fact, as he looks at them he not only feels at home, he feels as if he were back at the paint factory. And his children—if he has any—his children cry for Calder. He uses thoroughly advanced, wholly non-representational artists to design murals, posters, institutional advertisements: if we have the patience (or are given the opportuity) to wait until the West has declined a little longer, we shall all see the advertisements of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Smith illustrated by Jean Dubuffet.
This president’s minor executives may not be willing to hang a Kandinsky in the house, but they will wear one, if you make it into a sport shirt or a pair of swimming-trunks; and if you make it into a sofa, they will lie on it. They and their wives and children will sit on a porcupine, if you first exhibit it at the Museum of Modern Art and say that it is a chair. In fact, there is nothing, nothing in the whole world that someone won’t buy and sit in if you tell him it is a chair: the great new art form of our age, the one that will take anything we put in it, is the chair. If Hieronymus Bosch, if Christian Morgenstern, if the Marquis de Sade were living at this hour, what chairs they would be designing!”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“The Taste of the Age”, pp. 19–20
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

George Bird Evans photo
Tomas Kalnoky photo
Joseph Conrad photo
John Rogers Searle photo

“Women are good listeners, but it’s a waste of time telling your troubles to a man unless there’s something specific you want him to do.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Women & men

Chetan Bhagat photo
Gordon R. Dickson photo
George W. Bush photo
Gustave Nadaud photo

“The vicar’s right; he says that we
Are ever wayward, weak and blind;
He tells us in his homily
Ambition ruins all mankind;”

Gustave Nadaud (1820–1893) songwriter

Stanza 4.
Carcassonne, (c. 1887; with translation by John Reuben Thompson)

Conor Oberst photo

“If I could act like
This was my real life,
And not some cage where I've been placed,
Well then, I could tell you
The truth like I used to
And not be afraid of sounding fake.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

False Advertising
Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Bill McKibben photo
Morrissey photo
Samuel Taylor Coleridge photo
Alison Lohman photo
Robert Owen photo
Daniel Tosh photo
Robert Charles Wilson photo

“Do you want to tell the truth, or do you want to tell a story?”

Source: Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America (2009), p. 361

Conrad Aiken photo
François Bernier photo
Mickey Spillane photo

“I was thinking too damn much to be careful. When I stabbed my key in the lock and turned it there was a momentary catch in the tumblers before it went all the way around and I swore out loud as I rammed the door with my shoulder and hit the floor. Something swished through the air over my head and I caught an arm and pulled a squirming, fighting bundle of muscle down on top of me.
If I could have reached my rod I would have blown his guts out. His breath was in my face and I brought my knee up, but he jerked out of the way bringing his hand down again and my shoulder went numb after a split second of blinding pain. He tried again with one hand going for my throat, but I got one foot loose and kicked out and up and felt my toe smash onto his groin. The cramp of the pain doubled him over on top of me, his breath sucking in like a leaky tire.
Then I got cocky. I thought I had him. I went to get up and he moved. Just once. That thing in his hand smashed against the side of my head and I started to crumple up piece by piece until there wasn't anything left except the sense to see and hear enough to know that he had crawled out of the room and was falling down the stairs outside. Then I thought about the lock on my door and how I had a guy fix it so that I could tell if it had been jimmied open so I wouldn't step into any blind alleys without a gun in my hand, but because of a dame who lay naked and smiling on a bed I wouldn't share, I had forgotten all about it.”

The Big Kill (1951)

Charles Stross photo

““But then—you’re telling me they brought unrestricted communications with them?” he asked.
“Yup.” Rachel looked up from her console. “We’ve been trying for years to tell your leaders, in the nicest possible way: information wants to be free. But they wouldn’t listen. For forty years we tried. Then along comes the Festival, which treats censorship as a malfunction and routes communications around it. The Festival won’t take no for an answer because it doesn’t have an opinion on anything; it just is.”
“But information isn’t free. It can’t be. I mean, some things — if anyone could read anything they wanted, they might read things that would tend to deprave and corrupt them, wouldn’t they? People might give exactly the same consideration to blasphemous pornography that they pay to the Bible! They could plot against the state, or each other, without the police being able to listen in and stop them!”
Martin sighed. “You’re still hooked on the state thing, aren’t you?” he said. “Can you take it from me, there are other ways of organizing your civilization?”
“Well—” Vassily blinked at him in mild confusion. “Are you telling me you let information circulate freely where you come from?”
“It’s not a matter of permitting it,” Rachel pointed out. “We had to admit that we couldn’t prevent it. Trying to prevent it was worse than the disease itself.”
“But, but lunatics could brew up biological weapons in their kitchens, destroy cities! Anarchists would acquire the power to overthrow the state, and nobody would be able to tell who they were or where they belonged anymore. The most foul nonsense would be spread, and nobody could stop it—” Vassily paused. “You don’t believe me,” he said plaintively.
“Oh, we believe you alright,” Martin said grimly. “It’s just—look, change isn’t always bad. Sometimes freedom of speech provides a release valve for social tensions that would lead to revolution. And at other times, well—what you’re protesting about boils down to a dislike for anything that disturbs the status quo. You see your government as a security blanket, a warm fluffy cover that’ll protect everybody from anything bad all the time. There’s a lot of that kind of thinking in the New Republic; the idea that people who aren’t kept firmly in their place will automatically behave badly. But where I come from, most people have enough common sense to avoid things that’d harm them; and those that don’t, need to be taught. Censorship just drives problems underground.”
“But, terrorists!”
“Yes,” Rachel interrupted, “terrorists. There are always people who think they’re doing the right thing by inflicting misery on their enemies, kid. And you’re perfectly right about brewing up biological weapons and spreading rumors. But—” She shrugged. “We can live with a low background rate of that sort of thing more easily than we can live with total surveillance and total censorship of everyone, all the time.” She looked grim. “If you think a lunatic planting a nuclear weapon in a city is bad, you’ve never seen what happens when a planet pushed the idea of ubiquitous surveillance and censorship to the limit. There are places where—” She shuddered.”

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 14, “The Telephone Repairman” (pp. 296-297)

John Angell James photo

“Tell me how a professor spends his Sabbaths, and I will tell you in what state his soul is spiritually considered.”

John Angell James (1785–1859) British abolitionist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 524.

James Wan photo
Ma Anand Sheela photo

“You tell your Governor, your attorney general and all the bigoted pigs outside that if one person on Rancho Rajneesh is harmed I will have 15 of their heads, and I mean it. You have given me no choice. Even though I am a nonviolent person I will do that.”

Ma Anand Sheela (1949) former chief assistant for the Indian mystic Rajneesh

September 18, 1984 press reports, quoted in — [Congressional Record, The Town That Was Poisoned, United States House of Representatives, February 28, 1985, Congressman James H. Weaver]

Luise Rainer photo

“Some live lies who won’t tell them; some tell lies who won’t live them.”

Henry S. Haskins (1875–1957)

Source: Meditations in Wall Street (1940), p. 119

Buckminster Fuller photo
Glenn Beck photo

“Glenn Beck: How many people here identify themselves as African Americans?
[audience raises hands]
Glenn Beck: Why?
Panelist: It's interchangeable.
Glenn Beck: Why not identify yourself as Americans?
Panelist: But people can look at you and tell you're black, you can't escape that.
Glenn Beck: Yeah, but I don't identify myself as white or a white American.”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
2009-11-13
Beck: I don't identify as white, why do black people identify as black?
Media Matters for America
2009-11-13
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200911130029
2000s, 2009

Ned Kelly photo
Doug Hall photo

“I am the truth-teller. I tried never to be mean, but Simon did tell me at one point. 'Doug, if you tell the truth, you don't have a choice.”

Doug Hall (1944) American television personality

Denver Post Doug Hall of "Inventor" invents a lot, but not the truth http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_3645379

Dmitry Medvedev photo
Johannes Tauler photo
George Holmes Howison photo
African Spir photo
Lawrence M. Schoen photo

“I’m dead, Jorl. You can’t tell me what to do.”

Lawrence M. Schoen (1959) American writer and klingonist

Source: Barsk: The Elephants' Graveyard (2015), Chapter 2, “Possibilities and Myths” (p. 24)

George Galloway photo

“We did not suspend our democracy in our darkest hours why are we suspending it now? the fawning over Thatcher had gone too far. We have had enough of this, It has gone on too long and it has gone too far. This put the tin hat on it the idea that we should suspend a vital part of our democratic process for a party political and private funeral, Mr Churchill didn’t ask for Parliament to be silenced, for confrontations across the House to be forbidden. When our soldiers were being laid waste in the Norway debate, the House of Commons perhaps rose to its finest 20th Century moment. Nobody said: ‘Our armed forces have suffered a disaster, the House of Commons cannot meet, the clash of ideas cannot be heard, we must muffle the drums and silence ourselves The so-called Beast of Bolsover said the argument was about class and that it was "one rule for those at the top and another for those at the bottom. We are here talking about the thing that we sometimes suggest has gone away class, That's what it is, it's about class. It's about the fact that people out there have to live their lives in a different way and there's one rule for those at the top and there's another for those at the bottom. It's never changed, I wish it had, but it hasn't. So when I heard about the chain of events it seemed to grow like topseed - first of all there was going to be some sort of ceremonial funeral, and then the next thing you (Mr Speaker) tell us that the chimes of Big Ben are going to stop and then we hear about the fact that we are going to abandon Prime Minister's question time, I mean, what's it all about? That's why the people out there are angry, a lot of them.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Mirror http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/margaret-thatcher-fawning-gone-far-1836314 George Galloway blasts cancellation of PMQs for Margret Thatchers funeral 16 April, 2013

Eric Clapton photo

“Tell me why, must I fall in love with you?”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Fall Like Rain (from the album Pilgrim - 1998)

Amir Taheri photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Ken Thompson photo
Roger Ebert photo
Miles Davis photo

“I’ll play it and tell you what it is later.”

Miles Davis (1926–1991) American jazz musician

In [So What: The Life of Miles Davis, John, Szwed, Random House, 2012, 9781448106462], and in many other books https://www.google.com/search?tbm=bks&hl=en&q=%22play+anything+on+a+horn%22+miles+davis#hl=en&q=%22+and+tell+you+what+it+is+later.+%22+miles+davis&tbm=bks
Sometimes rendered as: I'll play it first and tell you what it is later.
During a recording session for Prestige, on the album "Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet" (1956).
1950s

Sarvajna photo
Peter Weiss photo
Richard Feynman photo

“This conference was worse than a Rorschach test: There's a meaningless inkblot, and the others ask you what you think you see, but when you tell them, they start arguing with you!”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Part 5: "The World of One Physicist", "Is Electricity Fire?", p. 283
Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (1985)

“The problem with winning at blackjack and sports betting is that sooner or later a big guy in a suit tells you to leave.”

William Poundstone (1955) American writer

Part Seven, Signal and Noise, Hong Kong Syndicate, p. 323
Fortune's Formula (2005)

Michael Grimm photo
Earl Holliman photo
Larry the Cable Guy photo

“You can always tell when gas is expensive. You always see street gangs doing walk-bys.”

Larry the Cable Guy (1963) American stand-up comedian, actor, country music artist, voice artist

Morning Constitutions (2007)

Kate Bush photo

“I can't hear a word you're saying
Tell me what are you singing
In the sun”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, Aerial (2005), A Sky of Honey (Disc 2)

Robert Sheckley photo
Rene Balcer photo

“Your client's not insane… he's in love. Maybe it's hard for you to tell the two apart, but the law can.”

Rene Balcer (1954) screenwriter, producer and director

ADA Ron Carver in the Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode Crazy.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Sam Rayburn photo

“You'll never get mixed up if you simply tell the truth. Then you don't have to remember what you have said, and you never forget what you have said.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

W. B. Ragsdale, "An Old Friend Writes of Rayburn", in U.S. News & World Report (October 23, 1961), p. 72.

Leigh Brackett photo