Tell Them Quotes

“If you ever have children, tell them they must always be drunk. Drunk on love, drunk on poetry, drunk on wine, it doesn't matter. This world is too goddamn painful to waste a second of your existence sober.”

— Benjamin Hale

“Thomas Jefferson once said: 'Of course the people don't want war. But the people can be brought to the bidding of their leader. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for somehow a lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.' I think that was Jefferson. Oh wait. That was Hermann Goering. Shoot.
[Hosting the Peabody Awards for broadcasting excellence at the New York Waldorf-Astoria, June 6, 2006]”

— Jon Stewart

“I believe that we don't choose our stories," she began, leaning forward. "Our stories choose us." She paused and took a sip of water. Her hand, I noticed was steady.. "And if we don't tell them, then we are somehow diminished.”

— Dani Shapiro

“But then, Phillip reminded me of something that happened so long ago, I had completely forgotten it. He reminded of when we were ten, and he gave me my first kiss. We were on the swings out behind school, and right after he kissed me, he got up and ran away. Then all of a sudden, he stopped, turned around and yelled back, Will you marry me someday? And I yelled back to him, YES! And so he said that if people ask, I could tell them that we've been secretly engaged for the past twelve years. And so,.. you will probably all think I am very crazy, but I had to say YES again tonight!”

— Jillian Dodd

“Being fearless means busting down those walls of fear and being who you are, not who someone else thinks you are. People like to put others in a box and tell them what they can and cannot do or who they can and cannot be. No one can tell you who you are and what you are made of, only you yourself know what you are made of, and only you yourself can do the work to become who you want to be.”

— Mariska Hargitay

“Call school, tell them I'm lovesick.”

— Ellen Schreiber

“People don't believe what you tell them.
They rarely believe what you show them.
They often believe what their friends tell them.
They always believe what they tell themselves.”

— Seth Godin

“This is how I show my students that I love them - by putting books in their hands, by noticing what they are about, and finding books that tell them, I know. I know. I know how it is. I know who you are, and even though we may never speak of it, read this book, and know that I understand you.”

— Donalyn Miller

“If you teach people that something as deep inside them as their very personality is either a source of unimaginable shame or unmentionable sin, and if you tell them that their only ethical direction is either the suppression of that self in a life of suffering or a life of meaningless promiscuity followed by eternal damnation, then it is perhaps not surprising that their moral and sexual behavior becomes wildly dichotic; that it veers from compulsive activity to shame and withdrawal; or that it becomes anesthetized by drugs or alcohol or fatally distorted by the false, crude ideology of easy prophets. A”

— Andrew Sullivan

“Tell them that our lives can change with every breath we take. Lord, we both know that. Tell them to let go of what's gone because men like roger Briscoe never win. And tell them to hold on like hell to what they've got- each other, and a mother who would die for them, and almost did.”

— Billie Letts

“Tell them there are no holes for your fingers in the masks of men. Tell them how could you ever even hope to love what you can't grab onto.”

— David Foster Wallace

“She was here, and she was stronger than this, harder than this. They could make her hate herself, make her doubt herself, but they couldn't take away her deepest instinct. Not just the need to survive, but the need to survive long enough and strong enough to tell them to go fuck themselves.”

— Stacia Kane

“We also have to make sure our children know the history of women. Tell them the rotten truth: It wasn't always possible for women to become doctors or managers or insurance people. Let them be armed with a true picture of the way we want it to be.”

— Anne Roiphe

“But, sir, they have written me down upon the history of the country as worthy of expulsion, and in no unkindness I must tell them that for all future time my self-respect requires that I shall pass them as strangers.”

— Preston Brooks

“I tell them to bring him in. He comes in smiling in triumph. And he can't speak English. After his hours of waiting we cannot talk. I feel rather sorry for him and we do our best. Finally, with the aid of about everyone in the hotel he manages to ask: "Do you like France?" "Yes," I answer. He is satisfied.”

— Charlie Chaplin

“If I see my fans crying, I just want to give them a hug ... and tell them I love them.”

— Austin Mahone

“People say to me all the time, 'You have no fear.' I tell them, 'No, that's not true. I'm scared all the time. You have to have fear in order to have courage. I'm a courageous person because I'm a scared person.'”

— Ronda Rousey

“All I can tell them is pick a good one and sock it. I get back to the dugout and they ask me what it was I hit and I tell them I don't know except it looked good.”

— Babe Ruth

“If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business.”

— Marc Benioff

“When aspiring writers ask me about how they should target their writing, I tell them to pay no attention to that kind of thing. It will restrict you. You will end up falling into stereotypes in an effort to tailor your work toward a perceived genre category.”

— Carrie Vaughn

“People always ask me where they should go to work, and I always tell them to go to work for whom they admire the most.”

— Warren Buffett

“So when people go to the park this summer, they are not going to have the same quality of a visit. There is not going to be a ranger out on the trail to tell them about the important cultural and historic areas within the Olympic National Park.”

— Norm Dicks

“Stories are different every time you tell them - they allow so many possible narratives.”

— David Antin

“There is a kind of desperate need for somebody to tell everyone what to do, which I find really peculiar in America. And then when you tell them, they're not interested, because it's also a country where everybody's opinion is their opinion, and they really don't give a damn what you think. So it's a very odd experience.”

— Zadie Smith

“People resent movies that try to tell them exactly what to feel.”

— Oscar Isaac

“I talk to my readers on social networking sites, but I never tell them what the book is about. Writing is lonely, so from time to time I talk to them on the Internet. It's like chatting at a bar without leaving your office. I talk with them about a lot of things other than my books.”

— Paulo Coelho

“When you have a good friend that really cares for you and tries to stick in there with you, you treat them like nothing. Learn to be a good friend because one day you're gonna look up and say I lost a good friend. Learn how to be respectful to your friends, don't just start arguments with them and don't tell them the reason, always remember your friends will be there quicker than your family. Learn to remember you got great friends, don't forget that and they will always care for you no matter what. Always remember to smile and look up at what you got in life.”

— Marilyn Monroe

“Tell them the Night Angel walks. Tell them Justice is come.”

— Brent Weeks

“The hardest thing to get is true emotion. I always believe you need to earn that with the audience. You can't just tell them, 'Ok, be sad now.'”

— John Lasseter

“I want to go to Mexico. I've been stonewalled, so far, by federal officials. I want to go to Mexico, and I want to meet with the top Mexican officials. I want to tell them my past experience and what I can do here as Sheriff to help them get better intelligence and communications on the drug thing, not the illegal immigration thing.”

— Joe Arpaio

“If you tell them what they want to hear, they don't bother to try to see.”

— Libba Bray

“The only reason why we ask other people how their weekend was is so we can tell them about our own weekend.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Given this, I believe we have sent the wrong message to young women. We need to stop telling them, "Get a mentor and you will excel." Instead, we need to tell them, "Excel and you will get a mentor." Clara”

— Sheryl Sandberg

“So, when people try to give you some book with a shiny round award on the cover, be kind and gracious, but tell them you don't read "fantasy," because you prefer stories that are real. Then come back here and continue your research on the cult of evil Librarians who secretly rule the world.”

— Brandon Sanderson

“Wanted to talk to them. I wanted to tell them that I was sorry. I wanted to say what every child wishes to say to his parents when they're gone and it's too late to say anything at all: that I loved them, and had always loved them.”

— John Connolly

“By afternoon, a dense crowd had gathered around the Bedford as word spread that an enormous infidel in brown pajamas was loading a truck full of supplies for Muslim schoolchildren ... Mortenson's size-fourteen feet drew a steady stream of bouncing eyebrows and bawdy jokes from onlookers. Spectators shouted guesses at Mortenson's nationality as he worked. Bosnia and Chechnya were deemd the most likely source of this large mangy-looking man. When Mortenson, with his rapidly improving Urdu, interrupted the speculation to tell them he was American, the crowd looked at his sweat-soaked and dirt-grimed shalwar, at his smudged and oily skin, and several men told him they didn't think so.”

— Greg Mortenson

“It were for me
To throw my sceptre at the injurious gods;
To tell them that this world did equal theirs
Till they had stolen our jewel.”

— William Shakespeare

“To aspiring writers, I would tell them that we live in a wonderful time where you're able to make your work visible, easily. If you think about it, even ten years ago or twenty years ago, there was a middle man, there was a publisher, there were studios, there was this world of rejection letters. Now, we're in a place where we have the technology and the ability to go shoot our own movies or to put stuff on YouTube or a blog, if you're a writer, or self-publish.”

— Diablo Cody

“To sing is to love and affirm,
to fly and to soar,
to coast into the hearts of the people
who listen
to tell them that life is to live,
that love is there,
that nothing is a promise,
but that beauty exists,
and must be hunted for and found.”

— Joan Baez

“Parents teach their children to look both ways when crossing the street. They tell them to look only one way when choosing a religion.”

— Graham Kendall

“When people ask me how they can know Gods plan for their lives, I tell them the best first step is to know God.”

— Pete Wilson

“If it's something I feel I can do alright, I like being in those, and some that I think Schneider and Spade would be funnier at than me, I tell them to do it. I don't have any clue how we decide. There's this thing, this Click actually, one of my friends called me up, my partner told me about this idea that Steve Koren had. Steve Koren, by the way, the guy who wrote it with Mark O'Keefe, Steve Koren I've known since I was 22. He was a page at Saturday Night Live.”

— Adam Sandler

“If I walk on the street, if I go to a restaurant, people come to me and say: "Can we take a photo together? Can you give me your autograph?" They would bring their expensive Armani or Prada wallet to sign. Other people who are desperate show me a photo of their dead daughter and ask: Can you support me? I tell them: How can I? Morally, of course, I sympathize with you. But I cannot support you and you cannot support me. This is the condition of this society. We are separated.”

— Ai Weiwei

“I love that I can stay connected with my fans and be able to tell them what's going on - their opinions are so important to me. But at the same time, it's very weird. I think the Internet can be a great thing but also really evil. Something can instantly hurt your feelings.”

— Selena Gomez

“We began to look at "Why is that?" And a large part of that has to do with the fact that when people have a lot of options to choose from they don't know how to tell them apart. They don't know how to keep track of them.”

— Sheena Iyengar

“Everyone is beautiful in their own way, in and out and you have no right to tell them otherwise.”

— Miley Cyrus

“Be undeniably good. When people ask me how do you make it in show business or whatever, what I always tell them & nobody ever takes note of it 'cause it's not the answer they wanted to hear-what they want to hear is here's how you get an agent, here's how you write a script, here's how you do this-but I always say, "Be so good they can't ignore you." If somebody's thinking, "How can I be really good?" people are going to come to you. It's much easier doing it that way than going to cocktail parties.”

— Steve Martin

“What I'm trying to do is to influence all the people I can influence. All those who are still under the dream and just put a big question mark in their mind. The acid dream is over, that is what I'm trying to tell them.”

— John Lennon

“I usually go in ahead of time, like at a rehearsal, or a meeting, and tell them, "It may appear that I'm going to go haywire, but I'm not." I always map out what I'm going to do. Still, a lot of it is improvised.”

— Paul Reubens

“People ask how I feel about getting old. I tell them I have the same question. I'm learning as I go.”

— Paul Simon