Monica Johnson Quotes

Some people say things they think you want to hear, and some people say the things they are actually thinking.

Most style is not honest enough.

You want me to tell me the truth or do you want me to stroke you?

It’s better to be quotable than to be honest.

I think the lies I make the most are in regards to my hopes and intentions for myself. As for lies I tell other people - I will certainly tell lies. When somebody is very ill and looks awful, and you tell them they look nice. Or if you just ate the last cookie, if someone asked me if I ate the last cookie, I would definitely lie about that.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

A world without any lies at all is not a good world, because it's artless and because there are no white lies, no flattery.

There is nothing in the world more difficult than candor, and nothing easier than flattery. If there is a hundredth of a fraction of a false note to candor, it immediately produces dissonance, and as a result, exposure. But in flattery, even if everything is false down to the last note, it is still pleasant, and people will listen not without pleasure; with coarse pleasure, perhaps, but pleasure nevertheless.

I worry about making work more important than what I know to be the truth. Throughout all areas of life, we're told how to look, how to act, what to speak, what to wear, what we should have and other people don't have, and we know none of that means anything. Yet these other messages never stop coming.

I'm not going to just say nice things about everybody unless I mean it.

I am not honest.

I abhor hypocrisy.

It's so much easier to tell people what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Honesty is a complex and tricky thing, and we don't want to be honest all the time.

Insincerity is always weakness; sincerity even in error is strength.

Don't tell lies, ever. No matter what - not even little white lies.

It's a waste of time for people to say things they think other people want to hear, or try and come off in a certain way. I try to be as honest as I can.

I'm hopeless at telling lies. I can attempt strategic ones in order not to hurt people's feelings, but then I'll blow it 10 minutes later.

Always be sincere, even when you don't mean it.

Put away from you a dissembling mouth.

Flattery makes friends and truth makes enemies

We tell only part of a man's qualities in his presence, and all of them when he is not present.

It is foreign to the Cherokee principle to feign friendship where it does not exist.

Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.