Mary McDonnell Quotes

We live in what is, but we find a thousand ways not to face it. Great theater strengthens our faculty to face it.

It's always better to face the truth, no matter how uncomfortable, than to continue coddling a lie.

Nothing makes a man, or a body of men, as mad as the truth. If there is no truth in it, they laugh it off.

People often claim to hunger for truth, but seldom like the taste when it's served up.

Harsh reality is always better than false hope.

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

Better to know the quick pain of truth than the ongoing pain of a long-held false hope.

"Comfort" is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being "comfortable".

To love the truth is to refuse to let oneself be saddened by it.

It is the opposite of ignorance—it is intellectual honesty: to be willing to accept reality and to call things what they are even when it is hard.

People don't like to hear the truth out here cause the truth makes them think.

Better to accept the wretched truth than struggle, twisting to make a wish a reality.

Trying to get people to face reality and see the world the way it really is is an absolutely critical aspect of leadership, in my view.

That's what I mean by radical truth. I mean accepting reality.

I believe in facing reality. But only because I don't like turning my back on it.

Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.

Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

The truth can't hurt you, it's just like the dark. It scares you witless, but in time you see things clear and stark.

We must have strong minds, ready to accept facts as they are.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy. And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

Why is it people who want the truth never believe it when they hear it?

If you stand right fronting and face to face to a fact, you will see the sun glimmer on both its surfaces, as if it were a cimeter, and feel its sweet edge dividing you through the heart and marrow, and so you will happily conclude your mortal career. Be it life or death, we crave only reality. If we are really dying, let us hear the rattle in our throats and feel cold in the extremities; if we are alive, let us go about our business.

But in the end, we can’t live our lives by ‘what if’ and ‘if only.’ We can only do the best we can to the best of our ability based on what we know. That’s why the truth is so important.

It is always hard when reality intrudes on belief.

The degree of complications and unhappiness in a person's life corresponds to the degree to which he dwells on the way he thinks the world ought to be rather than the way it really is. and being grateful it isn't worse, while trying to make it better.