Quotes about Honesty

Truthfulness is the main element of character.

Guard your integrity as a sacred thing; nothing at last is sacred except the integrity of your own mind.

You will have many ups and downs in life, but what is most important is that you remain "true to yourself." Then, as Shakespeare said, "thou can'st not then be false to any man.

It was the first honest emotional connection I'd had in a while. So I immediately panicked and had to leave.

Edmund Way Teale in his 1950 book Circle of the Seasons understood the dilemma better: It is morally as bad not to care whether a thing is true or not, so long as it makes you feel good, as it is not to care how you got your money as long as you have got it.

Tom Paine wrote in The Age of Reason: Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.

she had wondered if any of his Christianity was true. Had it all been a cover? A way to network and look honest? Or had he truly loved Jesus, but found ways to compartmentalize the sin in his life as so many others did?

Kids have what I call a built-in hypocrisy antenna that comes up and blocks out what you're saying when you're being a hypocrite.

Dishonesty of any kind will create a blemish.

Baloney is the lie laid on so thick you hate it. Blarney is flattery laid on so thin you love it.

The refusal to take sides on great moral issues is itself a decision. It is a silent acquiescence to evil. The Tragedy of our time is that those who still believe in honesty lack fire and conviction, while those who believe in dishonesty are full of passionate conviction.

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize the truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and others. When he had no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - to others and to yourself.