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Straightforwardness is about being unambiguous, open and frank

• Straightforward:  Not circuitous or evasive; honest and frank.  Free from ambiguity or pretence; plain and open. Oxford Dictionary
• I am a straightforward person.  I like to be direct with people.  Henry Paulson
• Openness,  Honesty,  Integrity,  Purity,  Assertiveness

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Straightforwardness is about being decent and honest

• Honesty refers to a facet of moral character and connotes positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness and straightforwardness along with the absence of lying, cheating or theft.  Wikipedia
• If you are a warrior, decency means that you are not cheating anybody at all. You are not even about to cheat anybody. There is a sense of straightforwardness and simplicity. With setting-sun vision, or vision based on cowardice, straightforwardness is always a problem. If people have some story or news to tell somebody else, first of all they are either excited or disappointed. Then they begin to figure out how to tell their news. They develop a plan, which leads them completely away from simply telling it. By the time a person hears the news, it is not news at all, but opinion. It becomes a message of some kind, rather than fresh, straightforward news. Decency is the absence of strategy. It is of utmost importance to realize that the warrior’s approach should be simple-minded sometimes, very simple and straightforward. That makes it very beautiful: you having nothing up your sleeve; therefore a sense of genuineness comes through. That is decency. Chögyam Trungpa
• Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.  Charles Caleb Colton
• Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness. Seneca
• Nothing so completely baffles one who is full of tricks and duplicity himself, than straightforward and simple integrity in another.  Charles Caleb Coltron
• Honesty,  Integrity

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Straightforwardness is about being assertive in a non-aggressive way

• Assertiveness is saying what you mean and asking for what you want, in a clear, factual and straightforward manner and without apology. It’s a neutral way to communicate a positive or negative message without being hurtful to the other person and without letting another person walk all over you. Assertiveness requires respect, honesty, personal responsibility, active listening and often, compromise.  Lisa Braithwaite
• Assertiveness

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Straightforwardness is not about simply and recklessly “telling it like it is.”

• Many people in a rather reckless context claim to ‘just tell it like it is’. In actuality, nobody really stresses what one says so much as the motive behind what one says; hence, he is merely blowing hot air and detracting from ‘what is’.  Criss Jami
• Straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness.

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Straightforwardness brings rewards

• I think if you show up and you work hard and you’re straightforward, you can always create your own opportunities. I hope I’m right.  Cory Monteith
• We are ashamed to seem evasive in the presence of a straightforward man, cowardly in the presence of a brave one, gross in the eyes of a refined one, and so on. We always imagine, and in imagining share, the judgments of the other mind.  Charles Horton Cooley

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Choose straightforward over unnecessarily complicated

• Maintaining a complicated life is a great way to avoid changing it. Elaine St. James
• Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. Confucius
• Year by year the complexities of this world grow more bewildering, and so each year we need all the more to seek peace and comfort in joyful simplicities.
• The simpler the deeper. We have a way of making things too complicated. Shawn McNiff
• To simplify complications is the first essential of success.  George Earle Buckle
• People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren’t already complicated enough.  Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity.  Thor-Heyerdahl
• When thought is too weak to be simply expressed, it’s clear proof that it should be rejected. Luc De Clapiers
• Human nature has a tendency to admire complexity but reward simplicity.  Ben Huh
• Life is not complex.  We are complex.  Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing. Oscar Wilde
• Complexity

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Make the complicated straightforward

• Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple. C.W.Ceram
• Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity. Charles Mingu
• An intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius —   and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction. Hoshang N. Akhtar
• One of the great maladies of our time is the way sophistication seems to be valued above common sense. Norman Cousins
• Misery is complexity. Happiness is simplicity. Lester Levenson
• Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.  Edward de Bono
• If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.  Albert Einstein
• Complexity is easy, simplicity requires mastery.  Peter Cajander
• One should use common words to say uncommon things.  Arthur Schopenhauer
• Simplicity

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Explain things in a straightforward way

• If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough. Albert Einstein
• You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.   Albert Einstein
• In general, I feel if you can’t say it clearly you don’t understand it yourself.  John Rogers Searle
• Complexity is, generally speaking, an illusion of conscious desire. All things exist in as simple a form as necessity dictates. When a thing is labeled ‘complex,’ that’s just a roundabout way of saying you’re not observant enough to understand it.   A. Lee Martinez
• Understanding

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Value straightforward common sense over sophistication

• One of the great maladies of our time is the way sophistication seems to be valued above common sense. Norman Cousins
• The only thing a person can never have too much of is common sense.  Kathryn Smith
• Common sense (which, in truth, is very uncommon) is the best sense I know of: abide by it; it will counsel you best.   Philip Dormer Stanhope
• The best prophet is common sense, our native wit.  Euripides
• Common sense is the best sense I know of. Lord Chesterfield
• Common sense

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