From my grandpa (PaPa), "Don't believe none of what you hear, and only half what you see". Orphaned in the 20s, homeless in the depression, his mother died from an uncontrollable nose bleed of all things in the back of a wagon, his father later died trying get a wagon across the swollen Colorado River in TX, he was the meanest and hardest man I ever met, he didn't take #*&% from anyone.
Iraqi Proverb, "Don't shake a stick at the shepherd".