Quotes About Integrity

Integrity includes but goes beyond honesty.

if there isn't deep integrity and fundamental character strength, the challenges of life will cause true motives to surface and human relationship failure will replace short-term success.

Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character. Sooner or later, you'll see this in every long-term relationship they have, whether it is with a business associate, a spouse, a friend, or a teenage child going through an identity crisis. It is character that communicates most eloquently. As Emerson once put it, "What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.

literature in the first 150 years or so focused on what could be called the Character Ethic as the foundation of success—things like integrity, humility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule.

paradigms from which my behavior and attitude flow are congruent with my deepest values and in harmony with correct principles. It also means to begin each day with those values firmly in mind. Then as the vicissitudes, as the challenges come, I can make my decisions based on those values. I can act with integrity. I don't have to react to the emotion, the circumstance. I can be truly proactive, value driven, because my values are clear.

things can hurt us physically or economically and can cause sorrow. But our character, our basic identity, does not have to be hurt at all.

They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living.

You can buy a person's hand, but you can not buy his heart.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole."2

if there is little or no trust, there is no foundation for permanent success. Only basic goodness gives life to technique.

Holding people to the responsible course is not demeaning; it is affirming.

Nurture Independent Will by Making and Keeping Promises One of the best ways to strengthen our independent will is to make and keep promises. Each time we do, we make deposits in our Personal Integrity Account.

When we value correct principles, we have truth—a knowledge of things as they are.

The place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our circle of influence, our own character.2 As we become independent—proactive, centered in correct principles, value-driven, and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity—we can choose to become interdependent: capable of building rich, enduring, productive relationships with other people.

But one of the executives was proactive. He was driven by values, not feelings.

Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.

There is no real excellence in all this world which can be separated from right living." DAVID STARR JORDAN

Make the human element as important as the financial or the technical element.

Just as junk food and lack of exercise can ruin an athlete's condition, those things that are obscene, crude, or pornographic can breed an inner darkness that numbs our higher sensibilities and substitutes the social conscience of "Will I be found out?" for the natural or divine conscience of "What is right and wrong?

Win/Win is not a personality technique. It's a total paradigm of human interaction. It comes from a character of integrity, maturity, and the Abundance Mentality. It grows out of high-trust relationships. It is embodied in agreements that effectively clarify and manage expectations as well as accomplishment. It thrives in supportive systems.

We often think of change and improvement coming from the outside in rather than from the inside out. Even if we recognize the need for change within, we usually think in terms of learning new skills, rather than showing more integrity to basic principles. But significant breakthroughs often represent internal breaks with traditional ways of thinking. I refer to these as paradigm

Integrity also means avoiding any communication that is deceptive, full of guile, or beneath the dignity of people. "A lie is any communication with intent to deceive," according to one definition of the word. Whether we communicate with words or behavior, if we have integrity, our intent cannot be to deceive.

So the place to begin building any relationship is inside ourselves, inside our Circle of Influence, our own character. As we become independent—proactive, centered in correct principles, value driven and able to organize and execute around the priorities in our life with integrity—we then can choose to become interdependent—capable of building rich, enduring, highly productive relationships with other people.