Quotes About Integrity

When you have No Deal as an option in your mind, you feel liberated because you have no need to manipulate people, to push your own agenda, to drive for what you want.

channeling our best hours into first-order objectives, and that means being a nonconformist in the best sense. "Everyone" might say finishing Harvard should be the most important task for a young Bill Gates. Instead, he aligned his efforts with his mission, despite any disapproving glances from well-meaning people.

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system. The price must be paid and the process followed. You always reap what you sow; there is no shortcut. This

you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character.

There is no effectiveness without discipline and there is no discipline without character. And there is no character without first starting and asking questions.

IBM stands for three things: the dignity of the individual, excellence, and service.

success in any endeavor is always derived from acting in harmony with the principles to which the success is tied.

Many people with secondary greatness—that is, social recognition for their talents—lack primary greatness or goodness in their character.

It also requires independent will, the power to do something when you don't want to do it, to be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.

In stark contrast, almost all the 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. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man's effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.

In the words of William George Jordan, "Into the hands of every individual is given a marvelous power for good or evil—the silent, unconscious, unseen influence of his life. This is simply the constant radiation of what man really is, not what he pretends to be." T

By making and keeping promises to ourselves and others, little by little, our honor becomes greater than our moods. The

Third, what you choose to do contributes to your ultimate values in life. Staying at work to get the edge on someone at the office is an entirely different evening in your life from staying because you value your boss's effectiveness and you genuinely want to contribute to the company's welfare. The experiences you have as you carry out your decisions take on quality and meaning in the context of your life as a whole.

whether you are a mailman, a hairdresser, an insurance salesman, a housewife—whatever. As long as you feel you are serving others, you do the job well. When you are concerned only with helping yourself, you do it less well—a law as inexorable as gravity.

If you carefully consider what you wanted to be said of you in the funeral experience, you will find your definition of success. It

The key to the ability to change is a changeless sense of who you are, what you are about and what you value.

Cecil B. DeMille observed of the principles contained in his monumental movie, The Ten Commandments, "It is impossible for us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law.

awareness—making promises, setting goals, and being true to them—

we need to apologize and we need to do it sincerely. Great deposits come in the sincere words:

Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves.

Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.

As we make and keep commitments, even small commitments, we begin to establish an inner integrity that gives us the awareness of self-control and the courage and strength to accept more of the responsibility for our own lives.

deals with both vision and principle-based values. It's not enough to have values without vision—you want to be good, but you want to be good for something. On the other hand, vision without values can create a Hitler.

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves. Inside-out