Quotes About Integrity

There was an eccentric editor of the Hansard , the official record of parliamentary debates in Britain. One day, goes the story, an angry member of Parliament stormed into the office of this editor, threw an open copy of the paper on the table, and said to him: "I never said that!" To which the editor replied quite calmly: "I know you didn't, but you should have.

It began to dawn on me that although fiction was undoubtedly fictitious it could also be true or false, not with the truth or falsehood of a news item but as to its disinterestedness, its intention, its integrity.

A coward may cover the ground with his words but when the time comes to fight he runs away.

A man might pick his way with the utmost care through a crowded market but find that the hem of his cloth had upset and broken another's wares; in such a case the man, not his cloth, was held to repair the damage.

Any wise man fears open spitefulness, whether it be in seriousness or in jest.

The problem with always having to be right is that sometimes you're not. And so, if you're like me, those times when you're not, you try and save face—especially after you've seriously fucked up. You make one bad decision and then another, trying to fix that very first fuck-up.

The plain unvarnished reality that we cannot escape who we are and most of the time we die as we lived.

crime? I was in trouble because a man had said I was not clean there. He was lying. He only said that because he was not clean there and I told him we should shower before we fucked.

Some people are given a great gift of not caring what others think or about anything but being faithful to what they're called by God to do.

It's because I want you to remember that character counts. You can be the best there ever was at something, but if you have no character, what do you have? On the other hand, if you have very little as far as accomplishments but you have character, well, then you're all right in my book.

Love is a commitment. Love is not just saying something, but doing something about what you say. Anybody can say the word, but few actually say it and live it.

A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.

They failed to grasp the central Socratic paradox: that it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong.

Corporate capitalism cannot be reformed. Our strength lies in our steadfastness and our integrity. It lies in our ability to hold fast to our ideals, as well as our willingness to sacrifice for those ideals. We must refuse to cooperate.

Writing of Ohio megachurch pastor Rod Parsley and his close associate, GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, he says, "[T]he heart of the Christian religion, all that is good and compassionate within it, has been tossed aside, ruthlessly gouged out and thrown into a heap with all the other inner organs. Only the shell, the form, remains. Christianity is of no use to Parsley, Blackwell and the others. In its name they kill it.

Moral courage is the courage to act and to speak the truth.

He was well aware, like Hugo, that good people were usually relentlessly persecuted, were rarely rewarded for virtue, and that those who held fast to truth and justice often found the way to their own cross.

Paine's power, like Orwell's and Baldwin's, lay in his refusal to be anyone's propagandist. He told people, even people who supported him, what they often did not want to hear.

I can tell you categorically that we at 60 Minutes did not pay Michael Jackson one cent.

I'd rather be able to face myself in the bathroom mirror than be rich and famous.

The day when I start a race without intending to win it, I won't be able to look at myself in the mirror.

I like who I am, trying to handle myself with integrity, character, honesty, treat people well and how I would like to be treated. And as long as I do those things, I can look at myself in the mirror and be proud of who I am at the end of each day.

I've done everything I can in my life to be the best person I can be, and I can look in the mirror and say that.

I have the love and respect of my wife and my kids. I could look in the mirror and I'm happy with that guy now. He's okay. He's not a schmuck.