QuotesCosmos
Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
• Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
• Variants:
• If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
• If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
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If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you.

— George Bernard Shaw

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "If you're going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh; otherwise they'll kill you." in the context of "Credited to Shaw in the lead in to the mockumentary C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004) and other recent works, but this or slight variants of it are also sometimes attributed to W. C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, and Oscar Wilde. It might possibly be derived from Shaw's statement in John Bull's Other Island (1907): "My way of joking is to tell the truth. It's the funniest joke in the world."
• Another possibility is that it is derived from Shaw's characteristic of Mark Twain: "He has to put things in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking."
• Variants:
• If you are going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you.
• If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise, they'll kill you." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "George Bernard Shaw" (Disputed) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#George Bernard Shaw#otherwise#better#theyll#youre#going#truth#laugh#tell#kill
George Bernard Shaw

About George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist with a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory. He wrote more than sixty plays, including such works as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). Shaw was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925.