"Too much truth is uncouth"
About this Quote
"Too much truth is uncouth" is a one-line dagger aimed at the fantasy that honesty is automatically virtuous. Franklin P. Adams, a newspaperman who made his name on wit and daily observation, compresses a whole newsroom reality into four words: truth is social material, not a pure substance. Handled clumsily or in excess, it stops being enlightening and starts being rude.
The trick is the word "uncouth". It doesn’t mean "wrong"; it means ill-mannered, poorly timed, lacking social finesse. Adams isn’t defending lies so much as mocking the pieties around "telling it like it is". The subtext is that people don’t just resist truth because they’re fragile; they resist it because truth has costs: embarrassment, loss of face, disrupted alliances. Civility often functions as a pressure valve, letting groups coexist without constant reality checks. Adams is pointing out that etiquette is a kind of editing.
As a journalist in early 20th-century America, Adams lived amid the rise of mass media, muckraking exposés, and the daily churn of opinion columns. Newspapers traded in revelation, but they also relied on access, advertisers, and readers who wanted their beliefs affirmed at breakfast. The line reads like a professional’s grim joke: you can publish the facts, but you can’t publish them without consequences.
It lands because it’s cynical without being nihilistic. It acknowledges that "truth" isn’t only about accuracy; it’s also about delivery, audience, and power.
The trick is the word "uncouth". It doesn’t mean "wrong"; it means ill-mannered, poorly timed, lacking social finesse. Adams isn’t defending lies so much as mocking the pieties around "telling it like it is". The subtext is that people don’t just resist truth because they’re fragile; they resist it because truth has costs: embarrassment, loss of face, disrupted alliances. Civility often functions as a pressure valve, letting groups coexist without constant reality checks. Adams is pointing out that etiquette is a kind of editing.
As a journalist in early 20th-century America, Adams lived amid the rise of mass media, muckraking exposés, and the daily churn of opinion columns. Newspapers traded in revelation, but they also relied on access, advertisers, and readers who wanted their beliefs affirmed at breakfast. The line reads like a professional’s grim joke: you can publish the facts, but you can’t publish them without consequences.
It lands because it’s cynical without being nihilistic. It acknowledges that "truth" isn’t only about accuracy; it’s also about delivery, audience, and power.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | "Too much truth is uncouth" — attributed to Franklin P. Adams (F.P.A.). See compiled quotations entry. |
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