Honest Advice Quotes

As a President, you need to have someone around you who can tell you that you are wrong.

My closest friends are the ones who tell me that I'm being dumb or that I'm being wrong.

I treat people who write me the way my friends and I all treat each other when we go to each other for advice, which is sometimes with supreme cruelty. I think that's what helps the advice sink in. If somebody comes at you with both barrels, the first shot opens your head, and the second shot allows the advice to get lodged inside.

A lawyer has no business with the justice or injustice of the cause which he undertakes, unless his client asks his opinion, and then he is bound to give it honestly. The justice or injustice of the cause is to be decided by the judge.

'Speak truth unto power'. What does this mean? It means giving your best advice to superiors based on the best information available and objective analysis even when you know it may not be music to their ears

Too often, when you are close to people in power, you're trying to make them happy; you're trying to tell them what they want to hear. But I find that really good leaders don't want that. They want the truth. And you do them a service, and yourself a service, by just being honest and straightforward.

I can't tell you how many times I've had a friend tell me, in this tender and discreet voice, 'It's just you and me bro, and I want to tell you the truth: make a record of you and an acoustic guitar. Please. That's what everybody actually likes.' That's so funny to me.

I think about everyone in my life that was harsh with me or who gave me tough love and told me things that I didn't want to hear in that moment; fortunately it ended up being really good for me and I have nothing but respect for them today and those are the people I return to when I need that real honest advice.