The truth can be inconvenient and people hate to be inconvenienced.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The man who fills the feeder on Kendrick Street told his neighbor this morning that the dead limb over the driveway was fine, just fine, he had looked at it himself. He had not looked at it. I perch on that limb and I know what it does in a wind; it gives, the way a thing gives when the inside of it has gone to powder. The neighbor seemed relieved to hear it was fine. For years I thought people disliked bad news because it frightened them, but the fright would have been useful, the fright would have gotten a ladder out. It was the ladder they minded. The truth can be inconvenient and people hate to be inconvenienced, and I sat there on the powdery limb watching two men agree to believe me safe.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Wisdom is first the wisdom of the child, meeting life innocently, eagerly, without expectation.
- The old road has lots of twists and turns but few surprises.
- Better to stumble on the right path than stride forward on the wrong one.
- No matter where you look for it, the sun only rises in the east.
- A know-it-all doesn’t and doesn’t know that he doesn’t.
- We have learned so much about how to make a better world, but not learned enough.