Quotes About Integrity

It will hurt if you justify your choices based on material rewards.

What you have been given by your heavenly Father is yours to use, not abuse.

When someone annoys you and you feel the ire rising within, you've got to ask yourself, "Is this guy worth it? Am I willing to stoop to his or her level?

Before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

There are some men in this world who are born to do our unpleasant jobs for us. Your father's one of them.

The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you'll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don't you forget it - whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash.

As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don't think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I'm probably no better than you, but I'm certainly your equal.

Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.

Atticus, you must be wrong. How's that? Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. . . They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions, said Atticus, but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.

There's just some kind of men you have to shoot before you can say hidy to 'em. Even then, they ain't worth the bullet it takes to shoot 'em.

So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something - that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children. ~To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 16, spoken by the character Atticus

Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.

Do you defend niggers, Atticus? I asked him that evening. Of course I do. Don't say nigger, Scout. That's common. 's what everybody at school says. From now on it'll be everybody less one-- Well if you don't want me to grow up talkin' that way, why do you send me to school?

Remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.

Why doesn't their flesh creep? How can they devoutly believe everything they hear in church and then say the things they do and listen to the things they hear without throwing up? I thought I was a Christian but I'm not. I'm something else and I don't know what.

One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them.

But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing. I think that is why I'm nearly out of my mind.

I was taught never to take advantage of anybody who was less fortunate than myself, whether he be less fortunate in brains, wealth, or social position; it meant anybody...

If this thing's hushed up it'll be a simple denial to Jem of the way I've tried to raise him. Sometimes I think I'm a total failure as a parent, but I'm all they've got. Before Jem looks at anyone else he looks at me, and I've tried to live so I can look squarely back at him.. if I connived at something like this, frankly I couldn't meet his eye, and the day I can't do that I'll know I've lost him. I don't want to lose him and Scout, because they're all I've got.

But a man who has lived by truth—and you have believed in what he has lived—he does not leave you merely wary when he fails you, he leaves you with nothing.

You might hear some ugly talk about it at school, but do one thing for me if you will: you just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat.Try fighting with your head for a change . . .it's a good one, even if it does resist learning.

Atticus said, "I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it's not true.

The one human being she had ever fully and wholeheartedly trusted had failed her; the only man she had ever known to whom she could point and say with expert knowledge, "He is a gentleman, in his heart he is a gentleman," had betrayed her, publicly, grossly, and shamelessly.

Were you so scared that she'd hurt you, you ran, a big buck like you? No suh, I's scared I'd be in court, just like I am now. Scared of arrest, scared you'd have to face up to what you did? No suh, scared I'd hafta face up to what I didn't do.