Quotes about Integrity

A hypocritical businessman, whose fortune had been the misfortune of many others, told Mark Twain piously, "Before I die I intend to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I want to climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the Ten Commandments aloud." "I have a better idea," suggested Twain. "Why don't you stay right at home in Boston and keep them?

Do right for your own sake, and be happy in knowing that your neighbor will certainly share in the benefits resulting.

The Moral Sense teaches us what is right, and how to avoid it--when unpopular.

Virtue never has been as respectable as money.

The man who speaks an injurious truth lest his soul be not saved if he do otherwise, should reflect that that sort of a soul is not strictly worth saving. The

Why shouldn't we be honest and honorable, and lie every time we get a chance? That is to say, why shouldn't we be consistent, and either lie all the time or not at all?

It's the same here as it is on earth—you've got to earn a thing, square and honest, before you enjoy it.  You can't enjoy first and earn afterwards.  But there's this difference, here: you can choose your own occupation, and all the powers of heaven will be put forth to help you make a success of it, if you do your level best.  The shoe-maker on earth that had the soul of a poet in him won't have to make shoes here.

I am not the editor of a newspaper and shall always try to do right and be good so that God will not make me one.

After much reflection—suppose it was a lie? What then? Was it such a great matter? Aren't we always acting lies? Then why not tell them?

Well, then, says I, what's the use you learning to do right, when it's troublesome to do right and ain't no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?

Do right and you will be conspicuous.

No fact is more firmly established than that lying is a necessity of our circumstances--the deduction that it is then a Virtue goes without saying.