take at face value, to

To accept or trust someone or something based only on an initial or superficial presentation, without taking further proof, verification, or investigation into account. I've learned never to take corporate PR statements at face value. It's hard to take Jeff at face value when he's been caught lying in the past.

to accept someone or something just as it appears; to believe that the way things appear is the way they really are. He means what he says. You have to take him at face value. I take everything he says at face value.

to accept something exactly the way it appears to be. I don't know whether I can take her story at face value, but I will assume that she is not lying. The committee took the report at face value and approved the suggested changes.

To accept something or someone at its apparent worth. The transfer of face value from monetary currency to other matters took place in the nineteenth century. “He must take advertisements of publishers at their face value and regard them as what they claim to be,” wrote J. L. Whitney (The Literary World, 1883).