Unpleasant Truths Quotes

There are many hard truths that we must face in life.

… facts are like cows. If you stare them in the face hard enough, they generally run away.

There is no man so friendless but that he can find a friend sincere enough to tell him disagreeable truths.

We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!

The trouble with asking questions is you sometimes get answers you don't wanna hear.

I'm a fan of the truth... even if it's painfully hard to accept.

We don't often look into these unpleasant details of our great struggle. We all prefer to think that every man who wore the blue or gray was a Philip Sidney at heart.

Short, successful military adventures are as effective as the Super Bowl in diverting people's attention from unpleasant truths.

The causes of illusions are not pretty to discover. They're either vicious or tragic.

They're only words. You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth, even if it's an unpleasant truth.

Euphemisms are not, as many young people think, useless verbiage for that which can and should be said bluntly; they are like secret agents on a delicate mission, they must airily pass by a stinking mess with barely so much as a nod of the head, make their point of constructive criticism and continue on in calm forbearance. Euphemisms are unpleasant truths wearing diplomatic cologne.

The truth is messy. It's raw and uncomfortable. You can't blame people for preferring lies.

All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain.

The things that you know more about than you want to know are very useful.

Ugly problems often require ugly solutions. Solving an ugly problem in a pure manner is bloody hard.

Some forms of reality are so horrible we refuse to face them, unless we are trapped into it by comedy.

Everybody wants life to speak to them with special kindness. Every personal story begs to be steered toward reverie, toward some relief from unpleasant truths: That you are a self, that beyond anything else you want the best for that self. That, if it is to be you or someone else, you need it to be you, no matter what.

Science casts a long black shadow back over who we think we are, and where it falls the temperature falls with it. Its touch is chilly and unforgiving.

When a movie is called 'searingly honest,' it's almost invariably grim and demonstrates how bad things can get.

The best servants of the people, like the best valets, must whisper unpleasant truths in the master's ear. It is the court fool, not the foolish courtier, whom the king can least afford to lose.

The truth that makes men free is for the most part the truth which men prefer not to hear.

She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of duty.

The modern mind dislikes gold because it blurts out unpleasant truths.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

The intellectual's struggle to deny the obvious is never more desperate than when reality is unpleasant and at variance with his preconceptions and when full acknowledgment of it would undermine the foundations of his intellectual worldview.