Top 534 Tell Quotes

I always tell my kids if you lay down, people will step over you. But if you keep scrambling, if you keep going, someone will always, always give you a hand. Always. But you gotta keep dancing, you gotta keep your feet moving.

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.

Somebody tell the damn players to start playing like old school.

People tell you the world looks a certain way. Parents tell you how to think. Schools tell you how to think. TV. Religion. And then at a certain point, if you’re lucky, you realize you can make up your own mind. Nobody sets the rules but you. You can design your own life.

If I tell you there’s cheese on the moon, bring the crackers.

A revolutionary poem will not tell you who or when to kill, what and when to burn, or even how to theorize. It reminds you… where and when and how you are living and might live, it is a wick of desire.

There are only two people who can tell you the truth about yourself – an enemy who has lost his temper and a friend who loves you dearly.

While the government can tell you that I am an innocent man, the government’s letter cannot give me back my good name or my reputation.

Most children – I know I did when I was a kid – fantasize another set of parents. Or fantasize no parents. They don’t tell their real parents about that – you don’t want to tell Mom and Dad. Kids lead a very private life. And I was a typical child, I think. I was a liar.

We tell stories with maps about global warming, biodiversity; we can design more livable cities, track the spread of epidemics. That makes a difference.

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

I know a lot about cars, man. I can look at any car’s headlights and tell you exactly which way it’s coming.

You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself he doesn’t feel you’ve done a permanent job.

I tell people I’m too stupid to know what’s impossible. I have ridiculously large dreams, and half the time they come true.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, ‘Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.’ That’s not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

Be wiser than other people if you can, but do not tell them so.

I tell you, it is easier to build a grand opera or a city center than to build a personal house.

Hell is an outrage on humanity. When you tell me that your deity made you in his image, I reply that he must have been very ugly.

Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you who you are is true enough, but I’d know you better if you told me what you reread.

I’ve always been fascinated by dreams – they seem like such intriguing evidence of the brain’s obsession with narrative as a form of sense-making. But because dreaming is an unconscious process, we have little control over the stories we tell, so they can be fraught with anxiety, vulnerability, and exposure.

I never would say a player stinks. Ever. I’ll tell you their team stinks, and first of all, they know their team stinks. And the fans know their team stinks.

The schools would fail through their silence, the Church through its forgiveness, and the home through the denial and silence of the parents. The new generation has to hear what the older generation refuses to tell it.

Well, Art is Art, isn’t it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know.

You can’t assume anything in politics. That’s why every Saturday I walk around my district. I talk to the longshoremen in Charlestown. I listen to the people in East Boston and their concern on the airport noise. I walk down to the Star Market in Porter Square, and people tell me about meat prices.

I tell my brethren in Palestine: be patient and continue your blessed struggle. We did not forget you. We are still healing another wound in the Muslim nation, which is the occupation of our land by the Americans. Your battle and ours are one and the same.

I have to tell you, every day is a roller coaster.

If you see the President, tell him from me that whatever happens there will be no turning back.

You cannot look at a person and tell whether they’re good or bad.

The mistakes we make when we try to imagine our personal futures are also lawful, regular, and systematic. They, too, have a pattern that tells us about the powers and limits of foresight in much the same way that optical illusions tell us about the powers and limits of eyesight.

The question isn’t, ‘What do we want to know about people?’, It’s, ‘What do people want to tell about themselves?’

‘The Immigrant Story,’ which took me about twenty-five years to write, was a very simple story, but I couldn’t think of how to tell it. Then twenty years after I started it, I found this one page and realized it was going to be the story. That’s the only way you get it sometimes.

If you made me the national commissioner of football, I’d tell you one thing that I would mandate. The second Saturday in September, we’re going to have conference day. Everybody from the SEC plays a Big 12 team. Everybody from the Big Ten is going to play the ACC. Everybody from the Big East is going to play the Pac-10.

I’ll tell you, there is nothing better in life than being a late bloomer. I believe that success can happen at any time and at any age.

When people tell me I can’t do something, that’s what excites me. It makes me perform better.

Kids can’t build a marble statue at home. But I’ve had parents tell me that, after an exhibit, their kids immediately dug out their Lego kits and disappeared for three days.

The great thing about getting older is that you get a chance to tell the people in your life who matter what they mean to you.

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.

Even as someone who’s labeled a conservative – I’m a Republican I’m black, I’m heading up this organization in the Reagan administration – I can say that conservatives don’t exactly break their necks to tell blacks that they’re welcome.

I have a lot of stories to tell because I’ve been down a lot of roads people haven’t been.

Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.

My mama always used to tell me: ‘If you can’t find somethin’ to live for, you best find somethin’ to die for.’

I am amazed about how everyone wants to know about my love life. They whisper to me, ‘Tell me the truth? Is it true?’ Who cares? Because we have this job, we are to say to everybody what we do, or with whom we sleep? It’s a bit absurd, but that’s why everybody lies so much.

Tell me, why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

If you want to be thought a liar, always tell the truth.

Let me tell you what the truth is… I have learned one thing in life: there is no such thing as bad press. There is not. That’s a fundamental truth. The more bad things said about you, the more power they give to you.

A writer may tell me that he thinks man will ultimately become an ostrich. I cannot properly contradict him.

No wonder they call shopping ‘retail therapy,’ as any girl will tell you how it just takes away all the stress.

Let me tell you something – being thought of as a beautiful woman has spared me nothing in life. No heartache, no trouble. Love has been difficult. Beauty is essentially meaningless and it is always transitory.

With DNA, you have to be able to tell which genes are turned on or off. Current DNA sequencing cannot do that. The next generation of DNA sequencing needs to be able to do this. If somebody invents this, then we can start to very precisely identify cures for diseases.

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

Both individuals and societies tell themselves stories to simplify and make sense of the messy chaos of reality.

In science one tries to tell people, in such a way as to be understood by everyone, something that no one ever knew before. But in poetry, it’s the exact opposite.

I’ll tell you sort of an odd story: My music taste changed on 9/11. And it’s very strange. I actually intellectually find this very curious. But on 9/11, I didn’t like how rock music responded. And country music collectively, the way they responded, it resonated with me.