You're betraying your whole life if you don't say what you think - and you don't say it honestly and bluntly.
Interpretation
Honesty is crucial for authentic living and avoiding self-betrayal.
This quote emphasizes the importance of speaking one's mind and being honest about one's thoughts. It suggests that failing to communicate truthfully not only affects personal integrity but also leads to a betrayal of one's own life and values.
In practice
During a team meeting, to encourage openness, you might say this quote to emphasize the importance of sharing honest feedback.
If you get a call to go to a certain place in the middle of the night to pick up stolen goods, and it turns out the stolen goods don't show up but the cops show up, I think you're going to have a very weak story saying, 'Well, I got swindled here.'
I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking.
The joy of losing consists in this: Where there are no expectations, there is no disappointment.
History has blessed us with all the freedom and advantages of multiculturalism. But it has also blessed us, because of the accident of our origins, with the linguistic unity that brings a critically needed cohesion to a nation as diverse, multiracial and multiethnic as America. Why gratuitously throw away that priceless asset? How mindless to call the desire to retain it 'racist.
When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That's its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over, the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born.
Sometimes it's easy to go where the wind blows, but those that stand firmly planted are forces to be reckoned with.
I would rather speak the truth to ten men than blandishments and lying to a million. Try it, ye who think there is nothing in it! Try what it is to speak with God behind you, to speak so as to be only the arrow in the bow which the Almighty draws.
When one side only of a story is heard and often repeated, the human mind becomes impressed with it insensibly.
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
Most safely shall you tread the middle path.
Can I give them what they think they're going to get from me? That's always the big question.
Supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
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