Claude C. Hopkins Quotes

There is a world of difference between not disclosing fine detail and relying on broad and generalised assertions. The first may be understandable; the second is not acceptable.

The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.

Truth: An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance …

Whenever I write something, I always want to make sure that what I write is defensible.

Whenever you think you're writing what other people want to hear from you, and that it'll be commercial, you're doomed to disaster. Writing has to be as truthful and specific as we can make it. The minute we think that we're reaching more people and pleasing them, we get general. And audiences sense that and turn away, shun us.

After all we speak of people 'taking refuge' in vagueness -the more precise you are, in general the more likely you are to be wrong, whereas you stand a good chance of not being wrong if you make it vague enough.

Don't write about that which you don't know.

What I'm hoping to do though is to ground my extrapolations in specificity, and to make sure that the story I tell is deliberately and honestly told.

You can ask yourself, if a film makes a claim, is the claim true or false? Having said that, a style of presenting material doesn't guarantee truth. There's this crazy idea that somehow you pick a style, and by virtue of picking the style, you've provided something that is more truthful. It's as if you imagine that changing the font on a sentence you write makes it more truthful.

I feel with this film that as long as we tell Philomena's story and as long as we're true to her, which Jeff and Steve have already done by writing the story... we must not sell her short;. She's a most remarkable woman and all my concern was that we must be absolutely true to her story.

There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth.

Anything I write I ask myself: Is it true, is it entertaining?

You don't have to tell everything you know, but let what you do say be the truth as you understand it.

It is better to be wrong than to be vague.

It would be morally reprehensible not to tell the truth... Everything I have written has stood the test of time.

Rumor travels faster, but it don't stay put as long as truth.

Everything I say is 95% truthful.

A writer should concern himself with whatever absorbs his fancy, stirs his heart, and unlimbers his typewriter. ... A writer has the duty to be good, not lousy: true, not false; lively, not dull; accurate, not full of error. He should tend to lift people up, not lower them down.

Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.

I don't need headlines. For me, it's the truth that matters.

At no time did I intend to, or do I believe that I did put forward false information to the American people.

To be credible we must be truthful.

A writer need not devour a whole sheep in order to know what mutton tastes like, but he must at least eat a chop. Unless he gets his facts right, his imagination will lead him into all kinds of nonsense, and the facts he is most likely to get right are the facts of his own experience.

Radio is better than writing because they can't lie. Cause sometimes writers be straight lying, bro, and these headlines be making me mad.

Writing has to do with truth-telling. When you're writing, let's say, an essay for a magazine, you try to tell the truth at every moment. You do your best to quote people accurately and get everything right. Writing a novel is a break from that: freedom. When you're writing a novel, you are in charge; you can beef things up.