Quotes about Integrity

Human being's moral integrity begins when he is prepared to sacrifice his life for his convictions.

Karl Bonhoeffer taught his children to speak only when they had something to say. He did not tolerate sloppiness of expression any more than he tolerated self-pity or selfishness or boastful pride. His children loved and respected him in a way that made them eager to gain his approval; he hardly had to say anything to communicate his feelings on a subject. Often a cocked eyebrow was all it took.

The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.

Anyone on the side of truth, wherever it led, was a compatriot to be lauded.

Perhaps even more important in the Bonhoeffer family was acting upon what one said one believed. One must not only think clearly but must prove one's thoughts in action. If one was unprepared to live out what one claimed to believe, perhaps one didn't believe what one claimed after all!

The Bonhoeffers raised their children to do the right thing, so when they behaved selflessly and bravely, it was difficult to argue.

One cannot demand "the truth" at any cost, and for this girl to admit in front of the class that her father is a drunkard is to dishonor him. How one tells the truth depends on circumstances.

They understood that freedom was not merely the freedom to be left alone; it was the freedom to do what was right.

Wilberforce could put her at ease. Some, he writes to her, "are thrown into public, some have their lot in private life…. It would merit no better name than desertion…if I were thus to fly from the post where Providence has placed me.

Some wondered whether he was just kicking against the goads, but when someone asked Bonhoeffer whether he shouldn't join the German Christians in order to work against them from within, he answered that he couldn't. 'If you board the wrong train,' he said, 'it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction.

A real man's gotta be a hero to his wife before he can be a hero to anybody else- or he ain't a real man.

Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don't have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won't have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.