Quotes About Authenticity

So few people are truly themselves when they're in the spotlight.

The old jazz singers or old blues singers, you always just saw them kind of sitting down and singing. They weren't worried as much about their voice sounding perfect. They would make the song kind of fit their voice.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Why do I not seek some real good one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

A happy life is one which is in accordance with its own nature.

Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say let speech harmonize with life.

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

Watch a man in times of... adversity to discover what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off.

It is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

I was sort of in denial about doing country for awhile but I sort of grew up and realized who I was, what I wanted to say. I think country music is the best music in the world and I'm glad to be doing a country album. I hope people will love it as much as I loved making it.

I love Lady Antebellum and Miranda Lambert - they write from the heart. But it's hard to find a country music lover in L.A. None of my friends really listen to it, and they hate getting in the car with me because I just blast Taylor Swift.

I know what it feels like not to fit in, but trying to be like everyone around you doesn't work.

'Ludacris' is something that I made up. It just kind of describes me. Sometimes I have like a split personality. Sometimes I'm cool, calm, and collected, and other times I'm beyond crazy.

we live in a society of larvae--immature human beings, adolescents disguised as adults.

Bring forward what is true. Write it so that it is clear. Defend it to your last breath.

T]he present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original[.]

I don't want to be interesting. I want to be good.

Anyone who tells a lie has not pure heart, and cannot make good soup.

Whoever tells a lie is not pure of heart, and such a person can not cook a clean soup.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

We are never the people we think we are. We are the ones we pretend, with all our hearts we can't become.

Your problem is that you have been too honest for too long. Once you start doing it, lying is simpler than breathing.

That's because you've never been one. You haven't spent years wearing someone else's clothes, taking someone else's name, living in someone else's houses, and working someone else's job to fit in. And if you don't sell out, then you run away... proving you're the Gypsy they said you were all along.