Quotes About Integrity

Morality and honor are not to be confused. The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

The man who boasts that he habitually tells the truth is simply a man with no respect for it. It is not a thing to be thrown about loosely, like small change; it is something to be cherished and hoarded, and disbursed only when absolutely necessary.

If Franklin Delano Roosevelt became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he needs so sorely, he would begin fattening a missionary in the White House yard come Wednesday.

Thus she is almost always a failure as a lawyer, for the law requires only an armament of hollow phrases and stereotyped formulae, and a mental habit which puts these phantasms above sense, truth and justice; and she is almost always a failure in business, for business, in the main, is so foul a compound of trivialities and rogueries that her sense of intellectual integrity revolts against it.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

One cannot enter a State legislature or a prison for felons without becoming, in some measure, a dubious character.

Suffice it to say that the vile arts of the hussy prevailed over that noble and upright man—that she enticed him, by adroit appeals to his sympathy, into taking her upon automobile rides, into dining with her clandestinely in the private rooms of dubious hotels

Once a wily and wicked person, perceiving her helplessness, offered her a position as dish-washer in a fashionable and depraved cabaret; but our heroine was true to her rustic ideals and refused to work in such a gilded and glittering palace of frivolity—especially since she was offered only $3.00 per week with meals but no board.

It was the end, for whatever remains to me of life on the surface of this earth, of every vestige of mental peace and confidence in the integrity of Nature and of the human mind.

Such was the code: Strive for victory, but never seem to be self-involved.

He made his character his platform.

Those who deck themselves out in stolen gods are not viable.

Ef maður vill stela í þjófafélagi, þá verður að stela samkvæmt lögum; og helst að hafa tekið þátt í því að setja lögin sjálfur.

He belonged to the men who have cared for great things, not to bring themselves honor, but because doing great things could alone satisfy their natures.

To write a book, we must write with our whole life, not just during the moments we are sitting at our desk. When writing a book or an article, we know that our words will affect many other people. We do not have the right just to express our own suffering if it brings suffering to others.

Apparently, now, though, we writers and artists are not allowed to give offence. We must not question, criticise or insult the other, for fear of being hounded and murdered. These days a writer without bodyguards can hardly be considered serious. A bad review is the least of our problems.

the innocent have everything—integrity, respect, moral goodness—except pleasure. Pleasure: vortex and abyss—that which we desire and fear simultaneously. Pleasure implies dirtying your hands and mind, and being threatened; there is fear, disgust, self-loathing and moral failure. Pleasure was hard work; not everyone, perhaps not most people, could bear to find it.

As citizens, we must prevent wrongdoing because the world in which we all live, wrong-doer, wrong sufferer and spectator, is at stake.

Men have been found to resist the most powerful monarchs and to refuse to bow down before them, but few indeed have been found to resist the crowd, to stand up alone before misguided masses, to face their implacable frenzy without weapons and with folded arms to dare a no when a yes is demanded. Such a man was Zola!

If the ability to tell right from wrong should have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to 'demand' its exercise in every sane person no matter how erudite or ignorant.

He did not need to "close his ears to the voice of conscience," as the judgment has it, not because he had none, but because his conscience spoke with a "respectable voice," with the voice of respectable society around him.

Ce n'est ni une question d'intelligence ou de stupidité. Celui qui ne connaît pas le dialogue avec lui-même ne verra aucune difficulté à se contredire luimême, ce qui signifie qu'il ne sera jamais capable de – ni ne voudra - rendre compte de ce qu'il a dit ou fait ; il ne pourra non plus s'inquiéter de commettre quelque crime puisqu'il peut être sûr qu'aussitôt il l'oubliera

If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer.

Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.